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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. The history of this materialistic world is highlighted with strange events that scientists and historians, unable to explain logically, have dismissed with such labels as "supernatural," "miracle," etc. But there are those among us whose simple faith can—and often does—alter the scheme of the universe. Even a little child can do it.... to remember charlie by by ... Roger Dee Just a one-eyed dog named Charlie and a crippled boy named Joey—but between them they changed the face of the universe ... perhaps. Inearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him. His wheelchair was parked as usual on the tired strip of carpet grass that separated his mother's trailer from the one Doc Shull and I lived in, but it wasn't exactly where I'd learned to expect it when I rolled in at night from the fishing boats. Usually it was nearer the west end of the strip where Joey could look across the crushed-shell square of the Twin Palms trailer court and the palmetto flats to the Tampa highway beyond. But this time it was pushed back into the shadows away from the court lights. The boy wasn't watching the flats tonight, as he usually did. Instead he was lying back in his chair with his face turned to the sky, staring upward with such absorbed intensity that he didn't even know I was there until I spoke. "Anything wrong, Joey?" I asked. He said, "No, Roy," without taking his eyes off the sky. For a minute I had the prickly feeling you get when you are watching a movie and find that you know just what is going to happen next. You're puzzled and a little spooked until you realize that the reason you can predict the action so exactly is because you've seen the same thing happen somewhere else a long time ago. I forgot the feeling when I remembered why the kid wasn't watching the palmetto flats. But I couldn't help wondering why he'd turned to watching the sky instead. "What're you looking for up there, Joey?" I asked. He didn't move and from the tone of his voice I got the impression that he only half heard me. "I'm moving some stars," he said softly. I gave it up and went on to my own trailer without asking any more fool questions. How can you talk to a kid like that? Doc Shull wasn't in, but for once I didn't worry about him. I was trying to remember just what it was about my stumbling over Joey's wheelchair that had given me that screwy double-exposure feeling of familiarity. I got a can of beer out of the ice-box because I think better with something cold in my hand, and by the time I had finished the beer I had my answer. The business I'd gone through with Joey outside was familiar because it had happened before, about six weeks back when Doc and I first parked our trailer at the Twin Palms court. I'd nearly stumbled over Joey that time too, but he wasn't moving stars then. He was just staring ahead of him, waiting. He'd been sitting in his wheelchair at the west end of the carpet-grass strip, staring out over the palmetto flats toward the highway. He was practically holding his breath, as if he was waiting for somebody special to show up, so absorbed in his watching that he didn't know I was there until I spoke. He reminded me a little of a ventriloquist's dummy with his skinny, knob-kneed body, thin face and round, still eyes. Only there wasn't anything comical about him the way there is about a dummy. Maybe that's why I spoke, because he looked so deadly serious. "Anything wrong, kid?" I asked. He didn't jump or look up. His voice placed him as a cracker, either south Georgian or native Floridian. "I'm waiting for Charlie to come home," he said, keeping his eyes on the highway. Probably I'd have asked who Charlie was but just then the trailer door opened behind him and his mother took over. I couldn't see her too well because the lights were off inside the trailer. But I could tell from the way she filled up the doorway that she was big. I could make out the white blur of a cigarette in her mouth, and when she struck a match to light it—on her thumb-nail, like a man—I saw that she was fairly young and not bad-looking in a tough, sullen sort of way. The wind was blowing in my direction and it told me she'd had a drink recently, gin, by the smell of it. "This is none of your business, mister," she said. Her voice was Southern like the boy's but with all the softness ground out of it from living on the Florida coast where you hear a hundred different accents every day. "Let the boy alone." She was right about it being none of my business. I went on into the trailer I shared with Doc Shull and left the two of them waiting for Charlie together. Our trailer was dark inside, which meant first that Doc had probably gone out looking for a drink as soon as I left that morning to pick up a job, and second that he'd probably got too tight to find his way back. But I was wrong on at least one count, because when I switched on the light and dumped the packages I'd brought on the sink cabinet I saw Doc asleep in his bunk. He'd had a drink, though. I could smell it on him when I shook him awake, and it smelled like gin. Doc sat up and blinked against the light, a thin, elderly little man with bright blue eyes, a clipped brown mustache and scanty brown hair tousled and wild from sleep. He was stripped to his shorts against the heat, but at some time during the day he had bathed and shaved. He had even washed and ironed a shirt; it hung on a nail over his bunk with a crumpled pack of cigarettes in the pocket. "Crawl out and cook supper, Rip," I said, holding him to his end of our working agreement. "I've made a day and I'm hungry." Doc got up and stepped into his pants. He padded barefoot across the linoleum and poked at the packages on the sink cabinet. "Snapper steak again," he complained. "Roy, I'm sick of fish!" "You don't catch sirloins with a hand-line," I told him. And because I'd never been able to stay sore at him for long I added, "But we got beer. Where's the opener?" "I'm sick of beer, too," Doc said. "I need a real drink." I sniffed the air, making a business of it. "You've had one already. Where?" He grinned at me then with the wise-to-himself-and-the-world grin that lit up his face like turning on a light inside and made him different from anybody else on earth. "The largess of Providence," he said, "is bestowed impartially upon sot and Samaritan. I helped the little fellow next door to the bathroom this afternoon while his mother was away at work, and my selflessness had its just reward." Sometimes it's hard to tell when Doc is kidding. He's an educated man—used to teach at some Northern college, he said once, and I never doubted it—and talks like one when he wants to. But Doc's no bum, though he's a semi-alcoholic and lets me support him like an invalid uncle, and he's keen enough to read my mind like a racing form. "No, I didn't batter down the cupboard and help myself," he said. "The lady—her name is Mrs. Ethel Pond—gave me the drink. Why else do you suppose I'd launder a shirt?" That was like Doc. He hadn't touched her bottle though his insides were probably snarled up like barbed wire for the want of it. He'd shaved and pressed a shirt instead so he'd look decent enough to rate a shot of gin she'd offer him as a reward. It wasn't such a doubtful gamble at that, because Doc has a way with him when he bothers to use it; maybe that's why he bums around with me after the commercial fishing and migratory crop work, because he's used that charm too often in the wrong places. "Good enough," I said and punctured a can of beer apiece for us while Doc put the snapper steaks to cook. He told me more about our neighbors while we killed the beer. The Ponds were permanent residents. The kid—his name was Joey and he was ten—was a polio case who hadn't walked for over a year, and his mother was a waitress at a roadside joint named the Sea Shell Diner. There wasn't any Mr. Pond. I guessed there never had been, which would explain why Ethel acted so tough and sullen. We were halfway through supper when I remembered something the kid had said. "Who's Charlie?" I asked. Doc frowned at his plate. "The kid had a dog named Charlie, a big shaggy mutt with only one eye and no love for anybody but the boy. The dog isn't coming home. He was run down by a car on the highway while Joey was hospitalized with polio." "Tough," I said, thinking of the kid sitting out there all day in his wheelchair, straining his eyes across the palmetto flats. "You mean he's been waiting a year ?" Doc nodded, seemed to lose interest in the Ponds, so I let the subject drop. We sat around after supper and polished off the rest of the beer. When we turned in around midnight I figured we wouldn't be staying long at the Twin Palms trailer court. It wasn't a very comfortable place. I was wrong there. It wasn't comfortable, but we stayed. I couldn't have said at first why we stuck, and if Doc could he didn't volunteer. Neither of us talked about it. We just went on living the way we were used to living, a few weeks here and a few there, all over the States. We'd hit the Florida west coast too late for the citrus season, so I went in for the fishing instead. I worked the fishing boats all the way from Tampa down to Fort Myers, not signing on with any of the commercial companies because I like to move quick when I get restless. I picked the independent deep-water snapper runs mostly, because the percentage is good there if you've got a strong back and tough hands. Snapper fishing isn't the sport it seems to the one-day tourists who flock along because the fee is cheap. You fish from a wide-beamed old scow, usually, with hand-lines instead of regular tackle, and you use multiple hooks that go down to the bottom where the big red ones are. There's no real thrill to it, as the one-day anglers find out quickly. A snapper puts up no more fight than a catfish and the biggest job is to haul out his dead weight once you've got him surfaced. Usually a pro like me sells his catch to the boat's owner or to some clumsy sport who wants his picture shot with a big one, and there's nearly always a jackpot—from a pool made up at the beginning of every run—for the man landing the biggest fish of the day. There's a knack to hooking the big ones, and when the jackpots were running good I only worked a day or so a week and spent the rest of the time lying around the trailer playing cribbage and drinking beer with Doc Shull. Usually it was the life of Riley, but somehow it wasn't enough in this place. We'd get about half-oiled and work up a promising argument about what was wrong with the world. Then, just when we'd got life looking its screwball funniest with our arguments one or the other of us would look out the window and see Joey Pond in his wheelchair, waiting for a one-eyed dog named Charlie to come trotting home across the palmetto flats. He was always there, day or night, until his mother came home from work and rolled him inside. It wasn't right or natural for a kid to wait like that for anything and it worried me. I even offered once to buy the kid another mutt but Ethel Pond told me quick to mind my own business. Doc explained that the kid didn't want another mutt because he had what Doc called a psychological block. "Charlie was more than just a dog to him," Doc said. "He was a sort of symbol because he offered the kid two things that no one else in the world could—security and independence. With Charlie keeping him company he felt secure, and he was independent of the kids who could run and play because he had Charlie to play with. If he took another dog now he'd be giving up more than Charlie. He'd be giving up everything that Charlie had meant to him, then there wouldn't be any point in living." I could see it when Doc put it that way. The dog had spent more time with Joey than Ethel had, and the kid felt as safe with him as he'd have been with a platoon of Marines. And Charlie, being a one-man dog, had depended on Joey for the affection he wouldn't take from anybody else. The dog needed Joey and Joey needed him. Together, they'd been a natural. At first I thought it was funny that Joey never complained or cried when Charlie didn't come home, but Doc explained that it was all a part of this psychological block business. If Joey cried he'd be admitting that Charlie was lost. So he waited and watched, secure in his belief that Charlie would return. The Ponds got used to Doc and me being around, but they never got what you'd call intimate. Joey would laugh at some of the droll things Doc said, but his eyes always went back to the palmetto flats and the highway, looking for Charlie. And he never let anything interfere with his routine. That routine started every morning when old man Cloehessey, the postman, pedaled his bicycle out from Twin Palms to leave a handful of mail for the trailer-court tenants. Cloehessey would always make it a point to ride back by way of the Pond trailer and Joey would stop him and ask if he's seen anything of a one-eyed dog on his route that day. Old Cloehessey would lean on his bike and take off his sun helmet and mop his bald scalp, scowling while he pretended to think. Then he'd say, "Not today, Joey," or, "Thought so yesterday, but this fellow had two eyes on him. 'Twasn't Charlie." Then he'd pedal away, shaking his head. Later on the handyman would come around to swap sanitary tanks under the trailers and Joey would ask him the same question. Once a month the power company sent out a man to read the electric meters and he was part of Joey's routine too. It was hard on Ethel. Sometimes the kid would dream at night that Charlie had come home and was scratching at the trailer ramp to be let in, and he'd wake Ethel and beg her to go out and see. When that happened Doc and I could hear Ethel talking to him, low and steady, until all hours of the morning, and when he finally went back to sleep we'd hear her open the cupboard and take out the gin bottle. But there came a night that was more than Ethel could take, a night that changed Joey's routine and a lot more with it. It left a mark you've seen yourself—everybody has that's got eyes to see—though you never knew what made it. Nobody ever knew that but Joey and Ethel Pond and Doc and me. Doc and I were turning in around midnight that night when the kid sang out next door. We heard Ethel get up and go to him, and we got up too and opened a beer because we knew neither of us would sleep any more till she got Joey quiet again. But this night was different. Ethel hadn't talked to the kid long when he yelled, "Charlie! Charlie! " and after that we heard both of them bawling. A little later Ethel came out into the moonlight and shut the trailer door behind her. She looked rumpled and beaten, her hair straggling damply on her shoulders and her eyes puffed and red from crying. The gin she'd had hadn't helped any either. She stood for a while without moving, then she looked up at the sky and said something I'm not likely to forget. "Why couldn't You give the kid a break?" she said, not railing or anything but loud enough for us to hear. "You, up there—what's another lousy one-eyed mutt to You?" Doc and I looked at each other in the half-dark of our own trailer. "She's done it, Roy," Doc said. I knew what he meant and wished I didn't. Ethel had finally told the kid that Charlie wasn't coming back, not ever. That's why I was worried about Joey when I came home the next evening and found him watching the sky instead of the palmetto flats. It meant he'd given up waiting for Charlie. And the quiet way the kid spoke of moving the stars around worried me more, because it sounded outright crazy. Not that you could blame him for going off his head. It was tough enough to be pinned to a wheelchair without being able to wiggle so much as a toe. But to lose his dog in the bargain.... I was on my third beer when Doc Shull rolled in with a big package under his arm. Doc was stone sober, which surprised me, and he was hot and tired from a shopping trip to Tampa, which surprised me more. It was when he ripped the paper off his package, though, that I thought he'd lost his mind. "Books for Joey," Doc said. "Ethel and I agreed this morning that the boy needs another interest to occupy his time now, and since he can't go to school I'm going to teach him here." He went on to explain that Ethel hadn't had the heart the night before, desperate as she was, to tell the kid the whole truth. She'd told him instead, quoting an imaginary customer at the Sea Shell Diner, that a tourist car with Michigan license plates had picked Charlie up on the highway and taken him away. It was a good enough story. Joey still didn't know that Charlie was dead, but his waiting was over because no dog could be expected to find his way home from Michigan. "We've got to give the boy another interest," Doc said, putting away the books and puncturing another beer can. "Joey has a remarkable talent for concentration—most handicapped children have—that could be the end of him if it isn't diverted into safe channels." I thought the kid had cracked up already and said so. "Moving stars ?" Doc said when I told him. "Good Lord, Roy—" Ethel Pond knocked just then, interrupting him. She came in and had a beer with us and talked to Doc about his plan for educating Joey at home. But she couldn't tell us anything more about the kid's new fixation than we already knew. When she asked him why he stared up at the sky like that he'd say only that he wants something to remember Charlie by. It was about nine o'clock, when Ethel went home to cook supper. Doc and I knocked off our cribbage game and went outside with our folding chairs to get some air. It was then that the first star moved. It moved all of a sudden, the way any shooting star does, and shot across the sky in a curving, blue-white streak of fire. I didn't pay much attention, but Doc nearly choked on his beer. "Roy," he said, "that was Sirius! It moved! " I didn't see anything serious about it and said so. You can see a dozen or so stars zip across the sky on any clear night if you're in the mood to look up. "Not serious, you fool," Doc said. "The star Sirius—the Dog Star, it's called—it moved a good sixty degrees, then stopped dead !" I sat up and took notice then, partly because the star really had stopped instead of burning out the way a falling star seems to do, partly because anything that excites Doc Shull that much is something to think about. We watched the star like two cats at a mouse-hole, but it didn't move again. After a while a smaller one did, though, and later in the night a whole procession of them streaked across the sky and fell into place around the first one, forming a pattern that didn't make any sense to us. They stopped moving around midnight and we went to bed, but neither of us got to sleep right away. "Maybe we ought to look for another interest in life ourselves instead of drumming up one for Joey," Doc said. He meant it as a joke but it had a shaky sound; "Something besides getting beered up every night, for instance." "You think we've got the d.t.'s from drinking beer ?" I asked. Doc laughed at that, sounding more like his old self. "No, Roy. No two people ever had instantaneous and identical hallucinations." "Look," I said. "I know this sounds crazy but maybe Joey—" Doc wasn't amused any more. "Don't be a fool, Roy. If those stars really moved you can be sure of two things—Joey had nothing to do with it, and the papers will explain everything tomorrow." He was wrong on one count at least. The papers next day were packed with scareheads three inches high but none of them explained anything. The radio commentators quoted every authority they could reach, and astronomers were going crazy everywhere. It just couldn't happen, they said. Doc and I went over the news column by column that night and I learned more about the stars than I'd learned in a lifetime. Doc, as I've said before, is an educated man, and what he couldn't recall offhand about astronomy the newspapers quoted by chapter and verse. They ran interviews with astronomers at Harvard Observatory and Mount Wilson and Lick and Flagstaff and God knows where else, but nobody could explain why all of those stars would change position then stop. It set me back on my heels to learn that Sirius was twice as big as the Sun and more than twice as heavy, that it was three times as hot and had a little dark companion that was more solid than lead but didn't give off enough light to be seen with the naked eye. This little companion—astronomers called it the "Pup" because Sirius was the Dog Star—hadn't moved, which puzzled the astronomers no end. I suggested to Doc, only half joking, that maybe the Pup had stayed put because it wasn't bright enough to suit Joey's taste, but Doc called me down sharp. "Don't joke about Joey," he said sternly. "Getting back to Sirius—it's so far away that its light needs eight and a half years to reach us. That means it started moving when Joey was only eighteen months old. The speed of light is a universal constant, Roy, and astronomers say it can't be changed." "They said the stars couldn't be tossed around like pool balls, too," I pointed out. "I'm not saying that Joey really moved those damn stars, Doc, but if he did he could have moved the light along with them, couldn't he?" But Doc wouldn't argue the point. "I'm going out for air," he said. I trailed along, but we didn't get farther than Joey's wheelchair. There he sat, tense and absorbed, staring up at the night sky. Doc and I followed his gaze, the way you do automatically when somebody on the street ahead of you cranes his neck at something. We looked up just in time to see the stars start moving again. The first one to go was a big white one that slanted across the sky like a Roman candle fireball— zip , like that—and stopped dead beside the group that had collected around Sirius. Doc said, "There went Altair," and his voice sounded like he had just run a mile. That was only the beginning. During the next hour forty or fifty more stars flashed across the sky and joined the group that had moved the night before. The pattern they made still didn't look like anything in particular. I left Doc shaking his head at the sky and went over to give Joey, who had called it a night and was hand-rolling his wheelchair toward the Pond trailer, a boost up the entrance ramp. I pushed him inside where Doc couldn't hear, then I asked him how things were going. "Slow, Roy," he said. "I've got 'most a hundred to go, yet." "Then you're really moving those stars up there?" He looked surprised. "Sure, it's not so hard once you know how." The odds were even that he was pulling my leg, but I went ahead anyway and asked another question. "I can't make head or tail of it, Joey," I said. "What're you making up there?" He gave me a very small smile. "You'll know when I'm through," he said. I told Doc about that after we'd bunked in, but he said I should not encourage the kid in his crazy thinking. "Joey's heard everybody talking about those stars moving, the radio newscasters blared about it, so he's excited too. But he's got a lot more imagination than most people, because he's a cripple, and he could go off on a crazy tangent because he's upset about Charlie. The thing to do is give him a logical explanation instead of letting him think his fantasy is a fact." Doc was taking all this so hard—because it was upsetting things he'd taken for granted as being facts all his life, like those astronomers who were going nuts in droves all over the world. I didn't realize how upset Doc really was, though, till he woke me up at about 4:00 a.m. "I can't sleep for thinking about those stars," he said, sitting on the edge of my bunk. "Roy, I'm scared ." That from Doc was something I'd never expected to hear. It startled me wide enough awake to sit up in the dark and listen while he unloaded his worries. "I'm afraid," Doc said, "because what is happening up there isn't right or natural. It just can't be, yet it is." It was so quiet when he paused that I could hear the blood swishing in my ears. Finally Doc said, "Roy, the galaxy we live in is as delicately balanced as a fine watch. If that balance is upset too far our world will be affected drastically." Ordinarily I wouldn't have argued with Doc on his own ground, but I could see he was painting a mental picture of the whole universe crashing together like a Fourth of July fireworks display and I was afraid to let him go on. "The trouble with you educated people," I said, "is that you think your experts have got everything figured out, that there's nothing in the world their slide-rules can't pin down. Well, I'm an illiterate mugg, but I know that your astronomers can measure the stars till they're blue in the face and they'll never learn who put those stars there. So how do they know that whoever put them there won't move them again? I've always heard that if a man had faith enough he could move mountains. Well, if a man has the faith in himself that Joey's got maybe he could move stars, too." Doc sat quiet for a minute. "' There are more things, Horatio.... '" he began, then laughed. "A line worn threadbare by three hundred years of repetition but as apt tonight as ever, Roy. Do you really believe Joey is moving those stars?" "Why not?" I came back. "It's as good an answer as any the experts have come up with." Doc got up and went back to his own bunk. "Maybe you're right. We'll find out tomorrow." And we did. Doc did, rather, while I was hard at work hauling red snappers up from the bottom of the Gulf. I got home a little earlier than usual that night, just before it got really dark. Joey was sitting as usual all alone in his wheelchair. In the gloom I could see a stack of books on the grass beside him, books Doc had given him to study. The thing that stopped me was that Joey was staring at his feet as if they were the first ones he'd ever seen, and he had the same look of intense concentration on his face that I'd seen when he was watching the stars. I didn't know what to say to him, thinking maybe I'd better not mention the stars. But Joey spoke first. "Roy," he said, without taking his eyes off his toes, "did you know that Doc is an awfully wise man?" I said I'd always thought so, but why? "Doc said this morning that I ought not to move any more stars," the kid said. "He says I ought to concentrate instead on learning how to walk again so I can go to Michigan and find Charlie." For a minute I was mad enough to brain Doc Shull if he'd been handy. Anybody that would pull a gag like that on a crippled, helpless kid.... "Doc says that if I can do what I've been doing to the stars then it ought to be easy to move my own feet," Joey said. "And he's right, Roy. So I'm not going to move any more stars. I'm going to move my feet." He looked up at me with his small, solemn smile. "It took me a whole day to learn how to move that first star, Roy, but I could do this after only a couple of hours. Look...." And he wiggled the toes on both feet. It's a pity things don't happen in life like they do in books, because a first-class story could be made out of Joey Pond's knack for moving things by looking at them. In a book Joey might have saved the world or destroyed it, depending on which line would interest the most readers and bring the writer the fattest check, but of course it didn't really turn out either way. It ended in what Doc Shull called an anticlimax, leaving everybody happy enough except a few astronomers who like mysteries anyway or they wouldn't be astronomers in the first place. The stars that had been moved stayed where they were, but the pattern they had started was never finished. That unfinished pattern won't ever go away, in case you've wondered about it—it's up there in the sky where you can see it any clear night—but it will never be finished because Joey Pond lost interest in it when he learned to walk again. Walking was a slow business with Joey at first because his legs had got thin and weak—partially atrophied muscles, Doc said—and it took time to make them round and strong again. But in a couple of weeks he was stumping around on crutches and after that he never went near his wheelchair again. Ethel sent him to school at Sarasota by bus and before summer vacation time came around he was playing softball and fishing in the Gulf with a gang of other kids on Sundays. School opened up a whole new world to Joey and he fitted himself into the routine as neat as if he'd been doing it all his life. He learned a lot there and he forgot a lot that he'd learned for himself by being alone. Before we realized what was happening he was just like any other ten-year-old, full of curiosity and the devil, with no more power to move things by staring at them than anybody else had. I think he actually forgot about those stars along with other things that had meant so much to him when he was tied to his wheelchair and couldn't do anything but wait and think. For instance, a scrubby little terrier followed him home from Twin Palms one day and Ethel let him keep it. He fed the pup and washed it and named it Dugan, and after that he never said anything more about going to Michigan to find Charlie. It was only natural, of course, because kids—normal kids—forget their pain quickly. It's a sort of defense mechanism, Doc says, against the disappointments of this life. When school opened again in the fall Ethel sold her trailer and got a job in Tampa where Joey could walk to school instead of going by bus. When they were gone the Twin Palms trailer court was so lonesome and dead that Doc and I pulled out and went down to the Lake Okechobee country for the sugar cane season. We never heard from Ethel and Joey again. We've moved several times since; we're out in the San Joaquin Valley just now, with the celery croppers. But everywhere we go we're reminded of them. Every time we look up at a clear night sky we see what Doc calls the Joey Pond Stellar Monument, which is nothing but a funny sort of pattern roughed in with a hundred or so stars of all sizes and colors. The body of it is so sketchy that you'd never make out what it's supposed to be unless you knew already what you were looking for. To us the head of a dog is fairly plain. If you know enough to fill in the gaps you can see it was meant to be a big shaggy dog with only one eye. Doc says that footloose migratories like him and me forget old associations as quick as kids do—and for the same good reason—so I'm not especially interested now in where Ethel and Joey Pond are or how they're doing. But there's one thing I'll always wonder about, now that there's no way of ever knowing for sure. I wish I'd asked Joey or Ethel, before they moved away, how Charlie lost that other eye.

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THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT By MARGARET ST. CLAIR Being a wizard missionary to the Free'l needed more than magic—it called for a miracle! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The spell the Free'l were casting ought to have drawn the moon down from the heavens, made water run uphill, and inverted the order of the seasons. But, since they had got broor's blood instead of newt's, were using alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days later than the solstice anyhow, nothing happened. Neeshan watched their antics with a bitter smile. He'd tried hard with them. The Free'l were really a challenge to evangelical wizardry. They had some natural talent for magic, as was evinced by the frequent attempts they made to perform it, and they were interested in what he told them about its capacities. But they simply wouldn't take the trouble to do it right. How long had they been stamping around in their circle, anyhow? Since early moonset, and it was now almost dawn. No doubt they would go on stamping all next day, if not interrupted. It was time to call a halt. Neeshan strode into the middle of the circle. Rhn, the village chief, looked up from his drumming. "Go away," he said. "You'll spoil the charm." "What charm? Can't you see by now, Rhn, that it isn't going to work?" "Of course it will. It just takes time." "Hell it will. Hell it does. Watch." Neeshan pushed Rhn to one side and squatted down in the center of the circle. From the pockets of his black robe he produced stylus, dragon's blood, oil of anointing, and salt. He drew a design on the ground with the stylus, dropped dragon's blood at the corners of the parallelogram, and touched the inner cusps with the oil. Then, sighting carefully at the double red and white sun, which was just coming up, he touched the outer cusps with salt. An intense smoke sprang up. When the smoke died away, a small lizardlike creature was visible in the parallelogram. "Tell the demon what you want," Neeshan ordered the Free'l. The Free'l hesitated. They had few wants, after all, which was one of the things that made teaching them magic difficult. "Two big dyla melons," one of the younger ones said at last. "A new andana necklace," said another. "A tooter like the one you have," said Rhn, who was ambitious. "Straw for a new roof on my hut," said one of the older females. "That's enough for now," Neeshan interrupted. "The demon can't bring you a tooter, Rhn—you have to ask another sort of demon for that. The other things he can get. Sammel, to work!" The lizard in the parallelogram twitched its tail. It disappeared, and returned almost immediately with melons, a handsome necklace, and an enormous heap of straw. "Can I go now?" it asked. "Yes." Neeshan turned to the Free'l, who were sharing the dyla melons out around their circle. "You see? That's how it ought to be. You cast a spell. You're careful with it. And it works. Right away." "When you do it, it works," Rhn answered. "Magic works when anybody does it. But you have to do it right." Rhn raised his mud-plastered shoulders in a shrug. "It's such a lot of dreeze, doing it that way. Magic ought to be fun." He walked away, munching on a slice of the melon the demon had brought. Neeshan stared after him, his eyes hot. "Dreeze" was a Free'l word that referred originally to the nasal drip that accompanied that race's virulent head colds. It had been extended to mean almost anything annoying. The Free'l, who spent much of their time sitting in the rain, had a lot of colds in the head. Wasn't there anything to be done with these people? Even the simplest spell was too dreezish for them to bother with. He was getting a headache. He'd better perform a headache-removing spell. He retired to the hut the Free'l had assigned to him. The spell worked, of course, but it left him feeling soggy and dispirited. He was still standing in the hut, wondering what he should do next, when his big black-and-gold tooter in the corner gave a faint "woof." That meant headquarters wanted to communicate with him. Neeshan carefully aligned the tooter, which is basically a sort of lens for focusing neural force, with the rising double suns. He moved his couch out into a parallel position and lay down on it. In a minute or two he was deep in a cataleptic trance. The message from headquarters was long, circuitous, and couched in the elaborate, ego-caressing ceremonial of high magic, but its gist was clear enough. "Your report received," it boiled down to. "We are glad to hear that you are keeping on with the Free'l. We do not expect you to succeed with them—none of the other magical missionaries we have sent out ever has. But if you should succeed, by any chance, you would get your senior warlock's rating immediately. It would be no exaggeration, in fact, to say that the highest offices in the Brotherhood would be open to you." Neeshan came out of his trance. His eyes were round with wonder and cupidity. His senior warlock's rating—why, he wasn't due to get that for nearly four more six hundred-and-five-day years. And the highest offices in the Brotherhood—that could mean anything. Anything! He hadn't realized the Brotherhood set such store on converting the Free'l. Well, now, a reward like that was worth going to some trouble for. Neeshan sat down on his couch, his elbows on his knees, his fists pressed against his forehead, and tried to think. The Free'l liked magic, but they were lazy. Anything that involved accuracy impressed them as dreezish. And they didn't want anything. That was the biggest difficulty. Magic had nothing to offer them. He had never, Neeshan thought, heard one of the Free'l express a want. Wait, though. There was Rhn. He had shown a definite interest in Neeshan's tooter. Something in its intricate, florid black-and-gold curves seemed to fascinate him. True, he hadn't been interested in it for its legitimate uses, which were to extend and develop a magician's spiritual power. He probably thought that having it would give him more prestige and influence among his people. But for one of the Free'l to say "I wish I had that" about anything whatever meant that he could be worked on. Could the tooter be used as a bribe? Neeshan sighed heavily. Getting a tooter was painful and laborious. A tooter was carefully fitted to an individual magician's personality; in a sense, it was a part of his personality, and if Neeshan let Rhn have his tooter, he would be letting him have a part of himself. But the stakes were enormous. Neeshan got up from his couch. It had begun to rain, but he didn't want to spend time performing a rain-repelling spell. He wanted to find Rhn. Rhn was standing at the edge of the swamp, luxuriating in the downpour. The mud had washed from his shoulders, and he was already sniffling. Neeshan came to the point directly. "I'll give you my tooter," he said, almost choking over the words, "if you'll do a spell—a simple spell, mind you—exactly right." Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt an impulse to kick him. Then he said, "Well...." Neeshan began his instructions. It wouldn't do for him to help Rhn too directly, but he was willing to do everything reasonable. Rhn listened, scratching himself in the armpits and sneezing from time to time. After Neeshan had been through the directions twice, Rhn stopped him. "No, don't bother telling me again—it's just more dreeze. Give me the materials and I'll show you. Don't forget, you're giving me the tooter for this." He started off, Neeshan after him, to the latter's hut. While Neeshan looked on tensely, Rhn began going through the actions Neeshan had told him. Half-way through the first decad, he forgot. He inverted the order of the hand-passes, sprinkled salt on the wrong point, and mispronounced the names in the invocation. When he pulled his hands apart at the end, only a tiny yellow flame sprang up. Neeshan cursed bitterly. Rhn, however, was delighted. "Look at that, will you!" he exclaimed, clapping his chapped, scabby little hands together. "It worked! I'll take the tooter home with me now." "The tooter? For that ? You didn't do the spell right." Rhn stared at him indignantly. "You mean, you're not going to give me the tooter after all the trouble I went to? I only did it as a favor, really. Neeshan, I think it's very mean of you." "Try the spell again." "Oh, dreeze. You're too impatient. You never give anything time to work." He got up and walked off. For the next few days, everybody in the village avoided Neeshan. They all felt sorry for Rhn, who'd worked so hard, done everything he was told to, and been cheated out of his tooter by Neeshan. In the end the magician, cursing his own weakness, surrendered the tooter to Rhn. The accusatory atmosphere in the normally indifferent Free'l was intolerable. But now what was he to do? He'd given up his tooter—he had to ask Rhn to lend it to him when he wanted to contact headquarters—and the senior rating was no nearer than before. His head ached constantly, and all the spells he performed to cure the pain left him feeling wretchedly tired out. Magic, however, is an art of many resources, not all of them savory. Neeshan, in his desperation, began to invoke demons more disreputable than those he would ordinarily have consulted. In effect, he turned for help to the magical underworld. His thuggish informants were none too consistent. One demon told him one thing, another something else. The consensus, though, was that while there was nothing the Free'l actually wanted enough to go to any trouble for it (they didn't even want to get rid of their nasal drip, for example—in a perverse way they were proud of it), there was one thing they disliked intensely—Neeshan himself. The Free'l thought, the demons reported, that he was inconsiderate, tactless, officious, and a crashing bore. They regarded him as the psychological equivalent of the worst case of dreeze ever known, carried to the nth power. They wished he'd drop dead or hang himself. Neeshan dismissed the last of the demons. His eyes had begun to shine. The Free'l thought he was a nuisance, did they? They thought he was the most annoying thing they'd encountered in the course of their racial history? Good. Fine. Splendid. Then he'd really annoy them. He'd have to watch out for poison, of course. But in the end, they'd turn to magic to get rid of him. They'd have to. And then he'd have them. They'd be caught. One act of communal magic that really worked and they'd be sold on magic. He'd be sure of his senior rating. Neeshan began his campaign immediately. Where the Free'l were, there was he. He was always on hand with unwanted explanations, hypercritical objections, and maddening "wouldn't-it-be-betters." Whereas earlier in his evangelical mission he had confined himself to pointing out how much easier magic would make life for the Free'l, he now counciled and advised them on every phase of their daily routine, from mud-smearing to rain-sitting, and from the time they got up until they went to bed. He even pursued them with advice after they got into bed, and told them how to run their sex lives—advice which the Free'l, who set quite as much store by their sex lives as anybody does, resented passionately. But most of all he harped on their folly in putting up with nasal drip, and instructed them over and over again in the details of a charm—a quite simple charm—for getting rid of it. The charm would, he informed them, work equally well against anything— or person —that they found annoying. The food the Free'l brought him began to have a highly peculiar taste. Neeshan grinned and hung a theriacal charm, a first-class antidote to poison, around his neck. The Free'l's distaste for him bothered him, naturally, but he could stand it. When he had repeated the anti-annoyance charm to a group of Free'l last night, he had noticed that Rhn was listening eagerly. It wouldn't be much longer now. On the morning of the day before the equinox, Neeshan was awakened from sleep by an odd prickling sensation in his ears. It was a sensation he'd experienced only once before in his life, during his novitiate, and it took him a moment to identify it. Then he realized what it was. Somebody was casting a spell against him. At last! At last! It had worked! Neeshan put on his robe and hurried to the door of the hut. The day seemed remarkably overcast, almost like night, but that was caused by the spell. This one happened to involve the optic nerves. He began to grope his way cautiously toward the village center. He didn't want the Free'l to see him and get suspicious, but he did want to have the pleasure of seeing them cast their first accurate spell. (He was well protected against wind-damage from it, of course.) When he was almost at the center, he took cover behind a hut. He peered out. They were doing it right . Oh, what a satisfaction! Neeshan felt his chest expand with pride. And when the spell worked, when the big wind swooped down and blew him away, the Free'l would certainly receive a second magical missionary more kindly. Neeshan might even come back, well disguised, himself. The ritual went on. The dancers made three circles to the left, three circles to the right. Cross over, and all sprinkle salt on the interstices of the star Rhn had traced on the ground with the point of a knife. Back to the circle. One to the left, one to right, while Rhn, in the center of the circle, dusted over the salt with—with what ? "Hey!" Neeshan yelled in sudden alarm. "Not brimstone! Watch out! You're not doing it ri—" His chest contracted suddenly, as if a large, stony hand had seized his thorax above the waist. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't even say "Ouch!" It felt as if his chest—no, his whole body—was being compressed in on itself and turning into something as hard as stone. He tried to wave his tiny, heavy arms in a counter-charm; he couldn't even inhale. The last emotion he experienced was one of bitterness. He might have known the Free'l couldn't get anything right. The Free'l take a dim view of the small stone image that now stands in the center of their village. It is much too heavy for them to move, and while it is not nearly so much of a nuisance as Neeshan was when he was alive, it inconveniences them. They have to make a detour around it when they do their magic dances. They still hope, though, that the spells they are casting to get rid of him will work eventually. If he doesn't go away this autumn, he will the autumn after next. They have a good deal of faith in magic, when you come right down to it. And patience is their long suit.

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Going off track Birmingham's airport isn't like other airports. Right at the north-western end of runway 15 there's a country park and a row of benches. You'll see families picnicking here, enjoying the subsonic spectacle of planes from Brussels, Bucharest and Barcelona roaring just feet overhead on their final approach. Birmingham isn't like other British cities – it fetishises the technical and promotes the new. It is unstinting in its thrall to evolution and unsentimental about erasing past versions of the future in its rush to create new ones; the comprehensive 1960s vision of the city which itself swept away a century's Victoriana is currently being meticulously taken apart concrete slab by concrete slab. The city's motto is 'Forward'. When you get to a certain age you realise how much more visions of the future say about the present they're concocted in than the actual future they purport to show us hurtling towards. A track in the air, sitting on top of concrete legs that couldn't look any more like rational new humans striding into a technocratic promised land if they tried, will always evoke a kind of nostalgia for the 20th century. You think of the SAFEGE monorail depicted in Truffaut's 1966 film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451; and of regional news reporters with greasy barnets delivering excited pieces to camera about big plans. Today, on the elevated track that gambols over windswept car parks and threads through cheap motels between Birmingham's airport terminal and the railway station, a simple, ski resort-style people-mover system ferries passengers from plane to train. Three decades ago it was so much more exciting: the world's first commercial maglev, or magnetic levitation, system ran along here. Opened in 1984, the Birmingham Maglev came at the very tail end of a trente glorieuses for British transport technology and, more broadly, European engineering; an era that promised so much yet eventually bequeathed so many relics and ruins. The modernism of the 20th century, expressed especially in architecture and engineering, seemed like nothing less than the founding of a new order. Progress was to be continual, unstoppable and good. Yet today the physical and philosophical advances are being gradually taken apart and retracted, as if we'd woken up sweating and feared we'd somehow overreached ourselves. When the Birmingham Maglev was shuttered in 1995, one of the cars was dumped in a hedge near the A45. Furniture maker and transport enthusiast Andy Jones splashed out a mere £100 for it on eBay in 2011 (although, he says, "it cost me £400 to get it out of the hedge!"). Now it sits in a field behind Jones's house in Burton Green, a couple of miles east of the airport in the rolling Warwickshire countryside. I reminisce to Jones about my boyhood excitement for the Birmingham Maglev, about the silly enthusiasm I felt when I got to go on it in the late 80s. He shared the experience. "I used it in the old days too," he says. "I'd ride backwards and forwards on it, I thought it was smashing." "The problem was, it was the end of one lot of technology. The first time it snowed, all hell broke loose! It had a ratcheting mechanism, a primitive form of winch. Beneath that was the hydraulic system. It was lifted up by the magnetic field (under the [car] are steel sheets). But you'd use the hydraulic system to pull it back up on to the system if it broke." Bob Gwynne, associate curator of collections and research at the National Rail Museum in York, says: "British Rail's Derby Research Centre, founded in 1964, was arguably the world's leading rail research facility when it was in full operation. An understanding of the wheel and rail interface comes from there, as does the first tilting train, a new railbus, high-speed freight wagons, computer-controlled interlocking of track and signal, the first successful maglev and many other things." Gwynne has got the second of the three Birmingham Maglev cars at the museum. The maglev was a development that spun out of this research at Derby, and developed in a joint project with a private consortium that included the now-defunct General Electric Company. The maglev cars were built by Metro Cammell at its factory four miles from the airport in Washwood Heath. It was the same place many tube carriages came from, and if you look down the doors on Piccadilly line carriages as you get on and off, you can see a cheery 1973 plaque reminding travellers of this fact (the cheeky Brummie assumption here being that London commuters always look at the floor). But the British maglev never really took off. Tim Dunn, transport historian and co-presenter of the BBC's Trainspotting Live, explains why. "The early 80s was still a time of great British national-funded engineering," he says. "Success at Birmingham Airport would have been a great advert for British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) to sell maglev internationally. (Remember that BREL was always trying to sell its technology overseas, which is why several Pacer trains, developed on bus bodies, were sold to Iran.) Birmingham's Maglev only lasted 11 years: replacement parts were getting hard to obtain for what was really a unique system. Buses took over, and eventually a cable-hauled SkyRail people-mover was installed atop the piers. That's not as exciting for people like me, who like the idea of being whisked in a hovertrain pushed along by magnets. But then our real transport future always has been a pretty crap approximation of our dreams." You don't have to look far to find other relics of this white-hot time when post-war confidence begat all sorts of oddities. There's the test track for the French Aerotrain outside Orleans – a rocket-powered prototype that never made it to middle age. And in Emsland, the German conglomerate Transrapid built a 32km supersized test track for their maglev, which seemed to be on course for success. A variation of this train shuttles passengers from Shanghai to the airport, and the plan was to copy the same model in Munich, and even build an intercity line from Berlin to Hamburg. Today the test track stands idle awaiting its fate, while the Transrapid vehicles are up for auction; a museum in Erfurt is trying to save the latter from the scrapyard. Little remains of Germany's other maglev, the M-Bahn (or Magnetbahn), a short-lived shuttle service that ran in West Berlin from 1989-91 connecting stations whose service had been previously severed by the Berlin Wall. With the Wall gone, the old U-Bahn service was reinstated and the M-Bahn, which had run along its tracks, disappeared from the capital of the new Germany. "The problem with high-speed maglev like Transrapid in Germany," says Tim Dunn, "is that it doesn't really stack up against high-speed rail. It's more expensive, it's lower capacity, it's more complex. There's a gap in the market, but there's no market in the gap. What is needed generally in mass transit is more capacity, rather than super high speed." But back in the post-war period, we thought we could have everything. Britain's tertiary science departments expanded. We built the Comet jetliner, then Concorde; and concrete buildings to house them that the world envied, like the huge Heathrow hangar that Sir Owen Williams, primarily an engineer, designed for BOAC's planes; and architect James Stirling's much-lauded engineering faculty at Leicester University. Yet a little-known footnote from this period involves the interaction of magnets in high-speed train design with that other British invention that prevailed for a while but then seemed to peter out: the hovercraft. "We have always wanted to get rid of wheels," says Railworld's Brian Pearce. "One invention [to this end] was Chris Cockerell's hovercraft." At the same time, maglev technology was being developed by the British inventor, Eric Laithwaite, who was working on the linear induction motor at Imperial College when he found a way for it to produce lift as well as forward thrust. The two systems were combined to form a tracked hovercraft. "So along came RTV31," says Pearce. "The train rode along the track on a cushion of air created by big electric fans. Not very energy efficient! The forward motion was created by a linear motor, which moved along rather than going round and round." RTV31 could, like France's Aérotrain or the German Transrapid system, have been a viable new form of intercity travel. But funding was insufficient throughout the project and eventually Britain pulled the plug. In February 1973, a week after the first test RTV31 hovertrain reached 157km/h, the project was abandoned as part of wider budget cuts. There's an eerie reminder of the RTV31 in the big-skied, liminal lands of East Anglia. The train was tested on a track that ran up alongside the New Bedford River at Earith in Cambridgeshire: appropriate, because this 'river' is actually a supreme piece of man-made engineering from an earlier age, a dead-straight dyke dug by Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the fens in the 1600s. The RTV31 test-track piers endure as further reminders of a past future. The vehicle itself sits not far away at Peterborough's Railworld, where its colourful exterior is strikingly visible to today's travellers on the East Coast Main Line from London to Scotland. Its neighbour is the final redundant Birmingham Maglev car. In the far east, attitudes to maglev are different. Japan began maglev testing at roughly the same time as Britain in 1962 and is today building the longest, fastest maglev in the world. It will run mostly in tunnel, at 500km/h, taking a shocking 40 minutes to travel the 300km between Tokyo and Nagoya. It's been christened the Chūō Shinkansen: just another, faster type of bullet train for the central districts. Japan's system is a superconducting maglev, different to the Birmingham and German systems. It uses superconducting coils in the train, which cause repulsion to move the train forward. The Japanese also use wheels for the vehicle to 'land' on the track at low speeds. It's understandable that most serious interest in maglev deployment is in Asia – Japan, China, India," says John Harding, former chief maglev scientist for the US Department of Transportation. "This is understandable wherever passenger traffic is huge and can dilute the enormous capital cost. (Maglev is indisputably more expensive upfront than high-speed rail.) Even for California, which has huge air passenger traffic between LA and San Francisco, there is nowhere near enough demand to justify maglev; probably not enough to justify high-speed rail. But the Chūō Shinkansen will probably be the greatest success for maglev." The first link between Tokyo and Nagoya is scheduled to begin operation in 2027. Then the Chinese are proposing a 600km/h system between Shanghai and Beijing. So there are still some people dreaming big. The latest iteration of this is of course Hyperloop, whose vacuum tube technology harks back to another British engineering innovation: the atmospheric railway, which was developed by Henry Pinkus, the Samuda Brothers and eventually by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This technology used varying air pressure to suck trains up a track in a partial vacuum. Lines popped up in London, Dublin and most notably Brunel's South Devon Railway, where the pipes were plagued by nibbling rats but the pumping stations survive as relics of Victorian visionaries. If those systems looked like something from HG Wells, with men in top hats smoking cigars, then Hyperloop, with its internet age funding from Tesla founder Elon Musk, could well end up appearing as a very 2010s caper when we look at back on it from the distance of decades. Or maybe Hyperloop will revolutionise travel like maglev was supposed to. Back in Burton Green, Andy Jones's maglev car lies in limbo. "I'd like to build a platform around it," he says, "turn it into a playhouse for the grandchildren perhaps? A couple of people want to take it away and turn it into a cafe." Perversely perhaps, its fate may be decided by another type of transport technology: more conventional high speed rail. The route for the much-disputed High Speed 2 line from London to Birmingham slices right through the field where the maglev car sits. In the 2000s the UK Ultraspeed proposal was floated to link London, Birmingham, the North and Scotland by maglev. It never materialised. HS2 was the eventual successor to the Ultraspeed plan, though a less futuristic one. Jones has another idea for his forward moving relic: "Maybe I'll turn it into viewing platform, so you could watch HS2's outdated technology." This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies People act and learn together for a rich mixture of reasons. The current story that most of us tell ourselves about how humans get things done is focused on the well-known flavors of self-interest, which make for great drama−survival, power, wealth, sex, glory. People also do things together for fun, for the love of a challenge, and because we sometimes enjoy working together to make something beneficial to everybody. If I had to reduce the essence of Homo sapiens to five words, “people do complicated things together” would do. Online social networks can be powerful amplifiers of collective action precisely because they augment and extend the power of ever-complexifying human sociality. To be sure, gossip, conflict, slander, fraud, greed and bigotry are part of human sociality, and those parts of human behavior can be amplified, too. But altruism, fun, community and curiosity are also parts of human sociality−and I propose that the Web is an existence proof that these capabilities can be amplified, as well. Indeed, our species’ social inventiveness is central to what it is to be human. The parts of the human brain that evolved most recently, and which are connected to what we consider to be our “higher” faculties of reason and forethought, are also essential to social life. The neural information-processing required for recognizing people, remembering their reputations, learning the rituals that remove boundaries of mistrust and bind groups together, from bands to communities to civilizations, may have been enabled by (and may have driven the rapid evolution of) that uniquely human brain structure, the neocortex. But I didn’t start out by thinking about the evolutionary dynamics of sociality and the amplification of collective action. Like all of the others in this book, I started out by experiencing the new ways of being that Internet social media have made possible. And like the other Freesouls, Joi Ito has played a catalytic, communitarian, Mephistophelian, Pied-Piper-esque, authority-challenging, fun-loving role in my experiences of the possibilities of life online. Friends and Enthusiasts To me, direct experience of what I later came to call virtual communities preceded theories about the ways people do things together online. I met Joi Ito in the 1980s as part of what we called “the Electronic Networking Association,” a small group of enthusiasts who thought that sending black and white text to BBSs with 1200 baud modems was fun. Joi, like Stewart Brand, was and is what Fred Turner calls a network entrepreneur, who occupies what Ronald Burt would call key structural roles−what Malcolm Gladwell called a connector. Joi was also a believer in going out and doing things and not just talking about it. Joi was one of the founders of a multicultural BBS in Tokyo, and in the early 1990s I had begun to branch out from BBSs and the WELL to make connections in many different parts of the world. The fun of talking, planning, debating and helping each other online came before the notion that our tiny subculture might grow into a worldwide, many-to-many, multimedia network of a billion people. We started to dream about future cybersocial possibilities only after personally experiencing something new, moving and authentic in our webs of budding friendship and collaboration. In recent years, cyberculture studies has grown into a discipline−more properly, an interdiscipline involving sociologists, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, economists, programmers and political scientists. Back when people online argued in 1200 baud text about whether one could properly call what we were doing a form of community, there was no body of empirical evidence to serve as a foundation for scientific argument−all theory was anecdotal. By now, however, there is plenty of data. One particularly useful affordance of online sociality is that a great deal of public behavior is recorded and structured in a way that makes it suitable for systematic study. One effect of the digital Panopticon is the loss of privacy and the threat of tyrannical social control; another effect is a rich body of data about online behavior. Every one of Wikipedia’s millions of edits, and all the discussion and talk pages associated with those edits, is available for inspection−along with billions of Usenet messages. Patterns are beginning to emerge. We’re beginning to know something about what works and what doesn’t work with people online, and why. Does knowing something about the way technical architecture influences behavior mean that we can put that knowledge to use? Now that we are beginning to learn a little about the specific sociotechnical affordances of online social networks, is it possible to derive a normative design? How should designers think about the principles of beneficial social software? Can inhumane or dehumanizing effects of digital socializing be mitigated or eliminated by better media design? In what ways does the design of social media enable or prevent heartfelt communitas, organized collective action, social capital, cultural and economic production? I’ve continued to make a direct experience of my life online−from lifelong friends like Joi Ito to the other people around the world I’ve come to know, because online media made it possible to connect with people who shared my interests, even if I had never heard of them before, even if they lived on the other side of the world. But in parallel with my direct experience of the blogosphere, vlogosphere, twitterverse and other realms of digital discourse, I’ve continued to track new research and theory about what cyberculture might mean and the ways in which online communication media influence and are shaped by social forces. The Values of Volunteers One of the first questions that arose from my earliest experiences online was the question of why people in online communities should spend so much time answering each other’s questions, solving each other’s problems, without financial compensation. I first encountered Yochai Benkler in pursuit of my curiosity about the reason people would work together with strangers, without pay, to create something nobody owns−free and open source software. First in Coase’s Penguin, and then in The Wealth of Networks, Benkler contributed to important theoretical foundations for a new way of thinking about online activity−”commons based peer production,” technically made possible by a billion PCs and Internet connections−as a new form of organizing economic production, together with the market and the firm. If Benkler is right, the new story about how humans get things done includes an important corollary−if tools like the PC and the Internet make it easy enough, people are willing to work together for non-market incentives to create software, encyclopedias and archives of public domain literature. While the old story is that people are highly unlikely to cooperate with strangers to voluntarily create public goods, the new story seems to be that people will indeed create significant common value voluntarily, if it is easy enough for anybody to add what they want, whenever they want to add it (“self election”). There is plenty of evidence to support the hypothesis that what used to be considered altruism is now a byproduct of daily life online. So much of what we take for granted as part of daily life online, from the BIND software that makes domain names work, to the Apache webserver that powers a sizable chunk of the world’s websites, to the cheap Linux servers that Google stacks into its global datacloud, was created by volunteers who gave their creations away to make possible something larger−the Web as we know it. To some degree, the explosion of creativity that followed the debut of the Web in 1993 was made possible by deliberate design decisions on the part of the Internet’s architects−the end-to-end principle, built into the TCP/IP protocols that make the Internet possible, which deliberately decentralizes the power to innovate, to build something new and even more powerful on what already exists. Is it possible to understand exactly what it is about the web that makes Wikipedia, Linux, FightAIDS@Home, the Gutenberg Project and Creative Commons possible? And if so, can this theoretical knowledge be put to practical use? I am struck by a phrase of Benkler’s from his essay in this book: “We must now turn our attention to building systems that support human sociality.” That sounds right. But how would it be done? It’s easy to say and not as easy to see the ways in which social codes and power structures mold the design of communication media. We must develop a participative pedagogy, assisted by digital media and networked publics, that focuses on catalyzing, inspiring, nourishing, facilitating, and guiding literacies essential to individual and collective life. A Participative Pedagogy To accomplish this attention-turning, we must develop a participative pedagogy, assisted by digital media and networked publics, that focuses on catalyzing, inspiring, nourishing, facilitating, and guiding literacies essential to individual and collective life in the 21st century. Literacies are where the human brain, human sociality and communication technologies meet. We’re accustomed to thinking about the tangible parts of communication media−the devices and networks−but the less visible social practices and social affordances, from the alphabet to TCP/IP, are where human social genius can meet the augmenting power of technological networks. Literacy is the most important method Homo sapiens has used to introduce systems and tools to other humans, to train each other to partake of and contribute to culture, and to humanize the use of instruments that might otherwise enable commodification, mechanization and dehumanization. By literacy, I mean, following on Neil Postman and others, the set of skills that enable individuals to encode and decode knowledge and power via speech, writing, printing and collective action, and which, when learned, introduce the individual to a community. Literacy links technology and sociality. The alphabet did not cause the Roman Empire, but made it possible. Printing did not cause democracy or science, but literate populations, enabled by the printing press, devised systems for citizen governance and collective knowledge creation. The Internet did not cause open source production, Wikipedia or emergent collective responses to natural disasters, but it made it possible for people to act together in new ways, with people they weren’t able to organize action with before, in places and at paces for which collective action had never been possible. Literacies are the prerequisite for the human agency that used alphabets, presses and digital networks to create wealth, alleviate suffering and invent new institutions. If the humans currently alive are to take advantage of digital technologies to address the most severe problems that face our species and the biosphere, computers, telephones and digital networks are not enough. We need new literacies around participatory media, the dynamics of cooperation and collective action, the effective deployment of attention and the relatively rational and critical discourse necessary for a healthy public sphere. Media Literacies In Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement, I wrote: If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty first century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates). For this reason, participatory media literacy is not another subject to be shoehorned into the curriculum as job training for knowledge workers. Participatory media include (but aren’t limited to) blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, digital storytelling, virtual communities, social network services, virtual environments, and videoblogs. These distinctly different media share three common, interrelated characteristics: Many-to-many media now make it possible for every person connected to the network to broadcast as well as receive text, images, audio, video, software, data, discussions, transactions, computations, tags, or links to and from every other person. The asymmetry between broadcaster and audience that was dictated by the structure of pre-digital technologies has changed radically. This is a technical- structural characteristic. Participatory media are social media whose value and power derives from the active participation of many people. Value derives not just from the size of the audience, but from their power to link to each other, to form a public as well as a market. This is a psychological and social characteristic. Social networks, when amplified by information and communication networks, enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities. This is an economic and political characteristic. Like the early days of print, radio, and television, the present structure of the participatory media regime−the political, economic, social and cultural institutions that constrain and empower the way the new medium can be used, and which impose structures on flows of information and capital−is still unsettled. As legislative and regulatory battles, business competition, and social institutions vie to control the new regime, a potentially decisive and presently unknown variable is the degree and kind of public participation. Because the unique power of the new media regime is precisely its participatory potential, the number of people who participate in using it during its formative years, and the skill with which they attempt to take advantage of this potential, is particularly salient. Like Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins, I believe that a participatory culture in which most of the population see themselves as creators as well as consumers of culture is far more likely to generate freedom and wealth for more people than one in which a small portion of the population produces culture that the majority passively consume. The technological infrastructure for participatory media has grown rapidly, piggybacking on Moore’s Law, globalization, the telecom bubble and the innovations of Swiss physicists and computer science students. Increasingly, access to that infrastructure−the ability to upload a Macaca video or uncover a threat to democracy−has become economically accessible. Literacy−access to the codes and communities of vernacular video, microblogging, social bookmarking, wiki collaboration−is what is required to use that infrastructure to create a participatory culture. A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.

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Voting blocks Even if your interest in global politics extends no further than an occasional worried glance at the headlines, it will not have escaped your notice that there's something in the air these past few years: a kind of comprehensive, worldwide souring of the possibilities of representative democracy. You might not have thought of it in just these terms, but you'll certainly recognise its effects: it has shown up in phenomena as varied and seemingly disconnected as the Brexit referendum, the candidacy of Donald Trump in the USA and the turn toward authoritarian parties and governments in France, Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines and elsewhere. This is, perhaps, the pre-eminent political story of our time. What all of these more recent developments have in common is the sense among a wide swath of the electorate, in country after country, that the conventional practice of democracy has failed them. It no longer expresses the will of the people, if it ever did, and now serves only the needs of distant, shadowy, unspecified elites. And as is so often the case, there is a grain of truth to this. Our democracies certainly do seem to be having a hard time reckoning with many profound crises, whether these involve the integration of refugees, the disappearance of work or the threats of climate change. Our existing ways of making collective decisions have conspicuously failed to help us develop policies equal to the scale of crisis. There really is a global 1 per cent, and they seem to be hell-bent on having themselves a new Gilded Age, even as the public services the rest of us depend on are stripped to the bone. Throw in the despair that sets in after many years of imposed austerity and it's no wonder that many people have had enough. Some voters, either impervious to the lessons of history, or certain that whatever comes, they'll wind up on top, seek the clarity and vigour of a strong hand. They are perhaps encouraged by authoritarian leaders abroad, with their own internal reasons for disparaging the practice of democracy and much to gain by undermining confidence in it. Other voters have no particular time for the right, but feel betrayed by the parties they once trusted to advance their class interest. When they look around and see that someone other than them is indeed profiting from the status quo, they lose all patience with the idea that redress can be found in the ballot box. They're willing to see their own house burned down, if that's what it takes to stick it to the despised elites that are suddenly, heedlessly gentrifying their neighbourhoods and 'decanting' them from their homes. These are certainly depressing responses to the situation we find ourselves in, but they're not in any way irrational. Yet there's another, more hopeful and interesting way of responding to this same set of facts. It argues that what we need now is more democracy, not less; and a new kind of democracy at that, one founded on technical means. This curious prospect is presented to us by modes of social organisation and self-governance based on the blockchain, the technology underlying the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. And though blockchain advocates are nowhere near as prominent as the neo-authoritarian tendencies everywhere around us, what they are arguing for – 'distributed consensus' – is so interesting and so utterly unlike anything that has gone before that it deserves our fullest and most serious consideration. We're told that this emerging technology of 'distributed consensus' makes entirely new forms of human association possible; that anyone who wants to will be able to organise themselves into non-hierarchical groups with as much ability to act in the world as any state or corporation. The idea is that governmental structures at just about every level of society would be replaced by voluntary associations represented as software. Participants in these groups could remain anonymous to one another, if desired. But their identities would be verified – and their votes authenticated – by the same processes that secure the Bitcoin network, meaning that a permanent, secure record of every vote ever taken would be available for all to see. As each of these groups would be able to dispose of fiscal resources directly, Porto Alegre-style participatory budgeting could be realised, at whatever scale required. And just like Bitcoin, all of this functionality would be distributed across the network, making it inherently resistant to attempts at state censorship or control. Enthusiasm for distributed consensus is especially marked on the left, and it's easy to understand why: you'd have a hard time intentionally designing language more likely to appeal to tech-savvy horizontalists than 'distributed consensus'. The phrase summons up images of a society organised as a supple network instead of a hierarchy, its far-flung and mobile constituents bound together by a guiding ethos of participation, and an immaterial but powerful calculated technology. Thoughtful veterans of the post-2008 moment could be forgiven for thinking that, just maybe, here at last is a concrete way of achieving ends promised but never quite delivered by 15M, Occupy, Nuit Débout, or what has come to be known as the broader global 'movement of the squares': a commons outside the market and the state, a framework for democratic decision-making truly suited to the context of 21st-century life, and just possibly a functioning anarchy. This is certainly a supremely attractive vision, at least for those of us whose hearts beat a little bit faster at the prospect of ordinary people everywhere taking their fate into their own hands. In fact, there's really only one problem with it: it's all based on a misunderstanding. Let's back up a little. What, exactly, does distributed consensus mean? And what does it have to do with the new forms of democracy that might now be available to us? At a time when 'disruption' and 'disintermediation' remain potent words in the tech community, it was inevitable that someone would think to disrupt the way we organise civic life. Early experiments in digital democracy mostly confined themselves to tinkering in the mechanics of an otherwise conventional political process – working out, for example, how verified electronic voting might work. But more recent proposals, such as the "distributed autonomous organisations" pioneered by the Ethereum project, and the structurally similar Backfeed and democracy.earth initiatives, offer far more ambitious ideas of networked citizenship and decision-making. All three are based on the decentralised system of authentication that was originally developed for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The details of this mechanism are fiendishly difficult to understand, but its essence – and the innovation that so excites fans of networked democracy – is that it proves the legitimacy of Bitcoin transactions computationally, instead of relying on the authority of any government or banking institution. Everything rests on the blockchain, a permanent, transparent record of every exchange of Bitcoin ever made, an identical copy of which is held locally by every machine participating in the network. The blockchain maintains and reconciles all account balances, and is the sole arbiter in the event of a discrepancy or dispute. Whenever a new transaction appears on the Bitcoin network, all of its nodes perform an elaborate series of calculations aimed at validating it, and a majority of them must agree its legitimacy before it can be added to the shared record. This peer-to-peer process of distributed consensus can be applied beyond cryptocurrency to other situations that require some kind of procedure for the collective construction of truth. One of these is communal decision-making, at every level from household to nation. So by extension distributed consensus could be applied to the practice of democracy. Moreover, frameworks based on the blockchain promise to solve a number of long-standing democratic problems. They give organisers the ability to form associations rapidly and equip them with clear, secure and answerable decision processes. Their provisions allow members of those associations to float proposals, raise points for discussion among their peers, and allow enough time for deliberation before a question is called to a vote. They seem well suited to address some of the limits and frustrations of the Occupy-style forum, chiefly its requirement that everyone sharing an interest be present at once in order to be counted. And by allowing an association to specify any decision rule it pleases – from simple majority to absolute consensus – these frameworks even seem as if they might address the distaste some of us have always harboured for the coercion implicit in any majoritarian process (many don't like the idea that they need to go along with a notion just because 52 per cent of the population voted for it). These systems would appear to be applicable to democracy, then. But more than that, they gesture beyond conventional politics, toward something not far off utopian. When I meet people who are genuinely excited by platforms like democracy.earth, Ethereum and Backfeed, most often what they're responding to is not so much about how these frameworks address the practicalities of small-group decision-making. They're more about the radical, classically anarchist vision they offer of a world in which power is distributed across a federation of nonhierarchical assemblies unsanctioned by any apparatus of state, each one lasting just long enough to enact its participants' will before evaporating for ever. And that's why it's little short of heartbreaking to conclude that their hopes stem from a confusion of language. There's a fair degree of slippage between the way we'd be likely to interpret 'distributed consensus' in a political context, and what the same phrase actually denotes in its proper, technical context. As it turns out, here the word 'consensus' doesn't have anything to do with that sense of common purpose nurtured among a group of people over the course of long and difficult negotiations. Rather, it is technical jargon: it simply refers to the process by which all of the computers participating in the Bitcoin network eventually come to agree that a given transaction is valid. Instead of being a technically mediated process of agreement among peers and equals separated from one another in space and time, it's actually just a reconciliation of calculations being performed by distant machines. To mistake the one for the other is to commit a dangerous error. Why dangerous? One of the primary risks we face in embracing blockchain-based structures is that we may not actually be advancing the set of values we think we are. The provisions that frameworks like Ethereum, Backfeed and democracy.earth are founded on, in particular, are difficult to reconcile with other values and commitments we may hold, especially the notion of a life in common. An Ethereum distributed autonomous organisation, for example, requires that members buy shares in it in order to participate. This is necessitated by the reward structure that incentivises machines to perform the calculations that establish distributed consensus; but it seems curiously at odds with our understanding of political participation as an inalienable right. Ethereum democracies, too, have something most others do not: owners, someone empowered to add or remove voting members at will, set its binding decision rules, and change those rules whenever they desire. This is certainly a novel and interesting definition of a democracy. In fact, we find, on looking just a little more closely, that relations of property and ownership are absolutely central to this set of technologies – perhaps unsurprisingly, given its origins in the libertarian cryptocurrency community. This, for example, is how Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin thinks of human association: "In general, a human organisation can be defined as combination of two things: a set of property, and a protocol for a set of individuals, which may or may not be divided into certain classes with different conditions for entering or leaving the set, to interact with each other including rules for under what circumstances the individuals may use certain parts of the property." On closer inspection, this doesn't seem to have much to do with the practice of collective self-determination. And with a similar emphasis on property rights, the discourse around the blockchain also routinely treats as uncontroversial statements which are no such thing. The acceptance of these values runs so deep that when democracy.earth announced itself "a Y Combinator-backed organisation", nobody involved evidently wondered whether something which aspired to be a radical new way of doing politics should tout its backing by a venture-capital seed fund based in Silicon Valley. However utopian a politics of distributed consensus might sound to us, then, there's no way in which it can be prised apart from the entirely conventional constructions of ownership, private property and capital accumulation at its very heart, at least not in its present form. The profoundly murky quality of blockchain technology – and the relative lack of accessible but technically sophisticated resources that might explain it – thus causes some of us to endorse a set of propositions we'd otherwise recoil from. We criticise lack of government transparency, yet the blockchain is unfathomable to most people. Finally, too many of those touting distributed democracy retain a weirdly naive faith in the promises made about the blockchain's ability to transcend human fallibility, despite the well-known history of Bitcoin hacks, thefts and exploits. The founders of democracy.earth, for example, would have us believe that the blockchain is 'incorruptible', when, as all long-time observers of the cryptocurrency scene know, it's anything but. There is no better case in point than Ethereum's own networked democracy, a distributed venture fund rather confusingly called the DAO – Decentralised Autonomous Organisation – which was notoriously drained of a full third of its value by someone who evidently understood its coding better than its own originators. The Ethereum blockchain was subsequently 'hard forked' to undo this exploit, but only at the cost of angering that passionate fraction of their community convinced that distributed calculation could achieve what millennia of human law and custom had not. Though they may someday be robust enough to undergird decisions of genuine import, the experience of the DAO suggests that blockchain-based protocols are at present no more trustworthy than any of the less glamorous methods for assessing communal sentiment we already have at our disposal: the assembly, the discussion and the poll. There's a long list of benefits that might follow from shifting civic life on to a networked platform. If people could participate in public life from their laptop (or smartphone, or gaming platform), we might be able to democratise democracy itself, in all sorts of salutary ways. We might fold in all those who, by dint of their work, childcare or family obligations, are too exhausted or pressed for time to attend a decision-making assembly, and prevent the common circumstance in which such an assembly is captured by a bad-faith participant with an axe to grind. We could avoid having to gather stakeholders in a given place and time to make decisions of common import, and allow people to participate in public life as and when they were able to. And we could apply to that participation all the tools that arise from being networked and digital, particularly the ability to capture and analyse detailed data about a matter up for discussion. Under such circumstances, decisions could be compared between polities and jurisdictions, or with ones made locally in the past, and every aspect of a community's process of self-determination could be searchable, so available to all who might benefit. Over time, we might even learn to make wiser decisions, individually and collectively. Though the devil is always in the detail of implementation, these possibilities are all well worth exploring; and taken together they certainly furnish us with a strong case for networked democracy. But there are problems even with such relatively simple articulations of civic technology. Not everyone owns a smartphone, even now, let alone any more expensive networked devices. Just over 60 per cent of North Americans do, which falls far short of the universal access on which any system for networked democracy would need to be based. And technologists and advocates for new technology are often blind to the digital divide, which prevents measures that seem utterly obvious and self-evident to them from being at all suited to the lives of others. Transplanting democracy on to the blockchain is more problematic still, especially for those of us who aspire to a life broadly governed by the principles of the commons. When we dig beneath appealing-sounding buzzwords like 'peer-to-peer' and 'open source', we find that all of the current, real-world examples of blockchain technology commit us to a set of values that isn't merely at variance with those principles, but is outright inimical to them. (Our ignorance about how the blockchain actually works is an additional source of concern. When something is this complicated, this difficult for even very bright people to understand, it's inherently open to the greatest potential for abuse. The market in derivative securities comes to mind.) But maybe these are errors we can learn from. It's worth asking if some of the things the blockchain-based frameworks promise to do for us might be lifted whole out of the matrix of their origins. They get a lot of things very right, after all – particularly their understanding that democracy is an ongoing process, and not something that happens in a voting booth on one day every four or five years. And by framing the practice of active citizenship as something appropriate to every scale of collective existence, they suggest that such participation should occupy a larger place in our civic lives; that we can and should assume control over a wider range of the circumstances of our being. By the same token, democratic practice is a subtle thing. It is possible to do a great deal of damage by applying it without due regard for its strengths and limitations – witness Brexit. So perhaps the most important thing we might seek to gain from our encounter with tools like Backfeed and democracy.earth is a lesson in what works at what scale and what doesn't. We could then design a generation of distributed collective decision processes that are straightforward enough to be understood by the people using them, and not beholden to profoundly interested notions of private advantage. Developing an infrastructure built from the ground up would be a great way of redeeming the hope that's already been invested in these systems, and it might even convince those who have become disillusioned with democracy that there's more life in the concept yet. Maybe it's time we got started. This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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The forests bear the carbon Amogh Rai is standing on a small patch of wooded hillside, his Android phone held up above him, taking in the canopies of the trees that rise up around us. There's a problem though. It's a winter's day in the northern Indian foothills of the Himalayas, and the sun isn't breaking through the clouds with its usual clarity. Rai is using an app on his phone to help him understand the canopy's interception of light, but a layer of haze is preventing the 27-year-old Indian from collecting any meaningful data. Around him are some other tools of the trade: a portable device known as a ceptometer, used for measuring leaf area index; a spherical densiometer, for understanding canopy foliage and foliage covering the ground; and a laser rangefinder, which is used to estimate the height of trees but which has a tendency to malfunction. I'm six feet tall. The laser rangefinder is often convinced that I'm actually 17 metres. What is happening here may resemble a comedy of elemental errors, but it has significance far beyond the mountainous forests of Kumaon, one of two regions in the state of Uttarakhand. Rai is working with a number of other ecologists and field assistants on the pithily titled research project, Long-term Monitoring of Biomass Stocks and Forest Community Structures in Temperate Zone of Western Himalaya. Spearheaded by the non-governmental Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR) and funded by India's Department of Science and Technology, this project is about climate change. It seeks to find out how much carbon is being absorbed by the region's forests. This is achieved by taking the information collected – foliage overlay, the height of the trees, leaf area index and canopy layer, among other things – and using it to make an allometric equation. Understanding the basic mechanism of carbon sequestration and the level of human disturbance in these forests can then provide the framework for a plan that seeks to pay local people to maintain the forests. If the project can determine how much human interaction with the forest has affected the trees' ability to photosynthesise, then local people can be paid to preserve the forest. Otherwise, its ability to act as a 'carbon sink' (anything that absorbs more carbon than it releases) risks damage from overuse. Right now, the forests of Kumaon are used primarily for fodder and fuel. Traditionally, families in the area had as many as 15 or 20 cows of their own. These cows were particularly dependent on the forest leaves for fodder and bedding. The fewer leaves a tree has, the less able it is to photosynthesise properly. Today, there are far fewer cows in the area and so fodder use has come down by a multiple of four or five in the last 10 years. The market has come to Kumaon – once an isolated area – and artificial substitutes for fodder are now available to buy locally, with NGOs providing subsidies for this. But while the pressure on the forest to provide fodder has come down, the need for it to provide fuel has gone up. This is in the Himalayan foothills, after all, and it gets cold in winter. There is little central heating and so a serious amount of wood is needed for fires to heat houses and light stoves. Where extended families once lived together, with grandparents, parents and children all under one roof, now the nuclear family is becoming the norm, meaning that requirement for fuel has gone up. And if the people of Kumaon are to use the forest less, they need compensation, or they will have no fire to warm them through the winter months. Substitutes for wood are available but are unaffordable for most. So the challenge for this project mirrors the challenge faced by climate change scientists and policymakers across the world: how can you reduce fossil fuel emissions and maintain and improve carbon sinks without disrupting or destroying the lives of local people, many of whom will be those most affected by climate change? Last March, US science agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released figures that showed record concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, at over 400 parts per million (ppm). These levels are unprecedented in over a million years and have caused over one degree of warming. The level considered 'safe' – 350 ppm – was exceeded nearly three decades ago. Today's carbon concentrations represent a more than 40 per cent increase on those found in the atmosphere in the middle of the 18th century, before the beginning of the industrial revolution. Forests are an important part of this increase. They are, along with the planet's oceans, one of two major carbon sinks. Deforestation puts carbon into the atmosphere while at the same time removing that sink. "You can say that one quarter of this increase in carbon concentrations since the 18th century has been caused by deforestation," says Corinne Le Quéré, author of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a professor of climate change science and policy at the University of East Anglia. In 2014, the IPCC found that 11 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions were caused by forestry and other land use. Other sources claim this figure is anything up to 30 per cent. While Le Quéré points out that the effect of deforestation was more pronounced in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was a key driver in the process of industrialisation, she emphasises the ongoing importance of forests in the fight for a better environment. "We have very big ambitions to limit climate change well below two degrees… In terms of delivering a policy to achieve this, you absolutely need to have your forest in place and you absolutely need to tackle deforestation, because you cannot reach that level of climate stabilisation without it. Reforestation and afforestation is one of the best ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and forests have so many additional benefits for cleaning the air, cleaning the water, and so on." To begin working out how people in the Himalayan foothills might be reimbursed for preserving the forest, Amogh Rai and his colleagues need to find out how much carbon they are actually taking in. "We don't know how much carbon these forests are sequestering," says Rai. "If you are talking about the forest as a sink for carbon, you need to figure out how much carbon this place is storing, versus how much it is producing. And for that you need to go back to the basics of forestry. You need to figure it out by laying ecological plots measuring 400 metres squared in different areas, at different altitudes and in different disturbance gradients." Rai started working on the project in March 2014. He grew up in Delhi and was something of a tech prodigy. But as his career was advancing at the kind of rate that would leave most people sick with jealousy, he also felt something akin to the call of the wild. More intellectually curious than professionally ambitious, he enrolled at Dr BR Ambedkar University as a master's student and, in December 2013, travelled to Kumaon to work on his dissertation, which was on a tree called Myrica esculenta , known locally as kafal . "I love the forest because it is a place of silence and beauty," he says. "Also, it is one of the last places of refuge from strident urbanisation. A typical city kid reaction to noise, and tempo of life, I suppose." Rai's boss at CEDAR, Rajesh Thadani, a Yale-educated forest ecologist in his forties, is equally romantic about his attachment to the forest, quoting Thoreau to me: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." It's not hard to imagine both men communing with woodland spirits. Kumaon's unique elements appealed to Rai. The area has two main types of oak tree, a number of pines, rhododendrons, cedars and maples. There are leopards, porcupines, wild boars, a variety of snakes and rodents, and 200 species of butterfly. The forests grow down hillsides into valleys and up along plateaus. There are now 40 forest plots in Kumaon, and the hope is that in the next couple of years that total will rise to 100. One night, I join Amogh Rai for dinner at the house of one of his two field assistants, Narendra. Now in his forties, Narendra is from Kumaon and has three small children. He doesn’t earn much but he is given supplementary income when he needs it and owns a small amount of land in the area. In a room furnished only with a single bed, we sit on the floor and eat food grown in the local fields: daikon, tomatoes sprinkled with marijuana ("Yes, dude, welcome to the Himalayas," laughs Rai), nettles, smoked chilli and bread. Having left school at 17, Narendra tells me he worked in a Nestlé factory and then as a mechanic, before realising that he'd rather be back in the rural village he came from. Haldwani, the nearby town he was working in, was too hot and he just loved the forest too much. This was in the 1990s, when Kumaon was a particularly remote part of the country. It still is, comparatively speaking, but the arrival of mobile phones, satellite technology and the expansion of the road network has changed the area. The population has grown and rich professionals from the city have begun to build second homes in Kumaon, drawn to the area, like the British before them, by the promise of peace and tranquillity in the mountains, by the chance to get away from it all. Narendra remembers that, in these times, when far more people kept cattle, the forest was a place almost everyone used and understood. "We used to go out in a throng and bring trees down to use the leaves for manure, which is also used as a bedding for cattle," he says. "The animals would piss and shit on it and then it was used as manure." Today, keeping cattle has become economically unviable and artificial fertiliser can be bought at the market. As a result, fewer people use and understand the forest. "There is a strong relationship between the people and the forest in the area but it has weakened, for good and for bad," Rajesh Thadani, who also worked closely with Narendra, tells me. Good because the forest is less disturbed, bad because caring for the forest now comes less naturally. "People don't quite have the same religious and cultural attachment to it. Cattle became unprofitable. The quality of schools hasn't got better but most children now go to school, so they don't want to do agricultural work when they leave… If you don't feel a sense of ownership and belonging, you are less likely to do things. The expectation of money has arrived. The forest has become an externality." There is a conflict and a contradiction here: local people may be paid to preserve the forest by using it less, but using the forest less will weaken their ties to it, thus making the desire to preserve it less urgent. It's the kind of dilemma globalised industrial capitalism throws up everywhere. The system itself has wreaked havoc on the environment, but in a structure where even people in remote areas often aspire to a certain kind of lifestyle and expect to be paid for things they might once have done for free as part of the collective harmony of a community, the monetising of things like forest maintenance has come to be seen as a potential solution. If a value is put on the forest, then, in a market-driven world, local communities will be able to better resist, for example, the planned construction of a massive hotel in an undisturbed patch of woodland. Right now, Rai argues, "you only have aesthetic reasons, but we live and operate in a world that has a different set of values. For the first time, you can give a number to the value of a forest. It becomes a place that is [about] more than wondrous beasts." This expectation of money both jars with and is in keeping with Kumaon's past. When Rajesh Thadani first came to the area in the 90s, he was strongly influenced by Ramachandra Guha's book The Unquiet Woods, a short history of the Chipko movement published in 1990. A wonderful writer, Guha remains one of India's most influential thinkers on environmental and social issues. His and Joan Martinez-Alier's distinction between the 'full-stomach' environmentalism of the north and the 'empty-belly' environmentalism of the global south strikes a chord in Kumaon. There is a big difference between chopping down some trees in a forest to keep yourself warm in the Himalayan winter, and laying waste to the Amazon in the name of the fast food industry. The Chipko movement was a phenomenon in 1970s India, an organised resistance to the destruction of forests across the country. The villagers who formed it were actual tree huggers: the word Chipko means 'embrace'. In one incident, women in the Alaknanda valley, responding to the Indian government's decision to grant a plot of forest land to a sporting goods company, formed a human ring around the trees, preventing the men from cutting them down. In Kumaon, there is a strong history of this kind of resistance to exploitation by powerful forces. As Guha and the political scientist Arun Agrawal have pointed out, the villagers of the region did not take the impositions of the British Raj lying down. The 'empty-belly' environmentalism of India awakened early, a fierce reaction to the iniquitous and destructive development processes foisted on the country by the imperial power. From the late 19th century into the 20th, the Raj introduced legislation that reduced the rights of local people to use their forests. From 1916 to 1921, villagers in Kumaon set hundreds of forest fires in protest against such legislation. They depended on forests for firewood for heating and cooking, manure for fields and fodder for livestock. This demand was seen as running contrary to the needs of the British, who wanted to carve up the forests of Kumaon to create railway sleepers. This kind of practice didn't end with the Raj. "The government department once went on a rampage and planted cypresses all over the place," Amogh Rai says, laughing at the wasteful absurdity of the idea. "They planted them because someone who is a bureaucrat would have gone to England and thought, 'Oh, beautiful trees, let's plonk them up there.' But the cypress doesn't bear fruit, its wood is rotten when it comes to burning, its leaves are spindly so you can't feed it to cattle. All in all, it's a shitty tree." British officials used the excuse that local practices were environmentally destructive to defend the regulation of vast areas of forest. Nearly half the land in Kumaon was taken over by the forest department which, by the beginning of the 20th century, was endeavouring to protect land from fire as well as clamp down on cattle grazing and fodder harvests. In response to the regulations and reclassifications landing on them, villagers broke the rules. Fodder and fuel was extracted, livestock was grazed. British forest officers were fed misinformation like a fire is fed wood. Protests became more common and led to massive demonstrations in the second decade of the 20th century. These together with forest fires intersected with outrage at the coolie system of forced labour extraction, under which villagers were obliged to work for the colonial administration. In 1922, the forest department's annual report conceded that local campaigning had led to the breakdown of British control of the forests. The Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee recommended the establishment of forest councils that, following the return of the land to the people, would manage forests belonging to the villages. In 1931, the Forest Council Rules made this recommendation a formal reality and 3,000 elected forest councils – Van Panchayats – were created to manage the forests of Kumaon. Villagers could once again use their land the way they saw fit, free from the commercial priorities of the colonial government. This new plan to preserve the forests of the region in the 21st century is also being met with accusations of imperialism. A handful of local NGOs give the impression that the government is "selling up the mountains". Though it is a plan driven by Indians rather than the British, it can still be seen by Kumaonis as coming from outside and on high, an imperialistic scam dreamed up "for their own good". Money, while desired, also generates suspicion. This is exacerbated by the fact that, two years ago, the Uttarakhand state government was given about $20m by the Japanese government and industry, which have a vested interest in promoting forestry around the globe. No one seems to be sure what has happened to this money. There is a timber mafia in the region that is generous to local politicians, many of whom are widely believed to be corrupt. Since I left the area at the end of last year, a drought has resulted in a series of forest fires, which have not been dealt with properly. It is hoped that the Van Panchayats – the forest councils – will be immune to the corruption found in local government and that they could hold the key to any scheme that seeks to compensate local people for maintaining the forest. These established councils can link villages to the money made available for forest maintenance. A tripartite system involving the Van Panchayats, the NGOs and the government could then be set up to make sure the money falls into the right hands. Unlike carbon trading schemes or high profile incentive programmes like REDD and REDD+, the system for compensation envisaged in Kumaon would not be open to foreign tampering or carbon offsetting, though the question of the Japanese money complicates matters. "In developing economies, green investment has not gained any worthwhile traction," says Rai. "In developed countries without much ecological diversity, an understanding of their importance is an important driver in decisions to invest in research in the developing world. So, it is beneficial. The problem arises when these 'investments' get turned into market-oriented solutions. So yes, when companies in Germany 'gift' improved cookstoves in Tanzania and earn carbon credit, it is a problem." This 'gifting' is not what anyone has in mind for the Himalayan foothills. The idea is to create something fairly simple that can be executed neatly across a spectrum. A paper will be submitted to the Department of Science and Technology and then a conversation about incentive structures for the local community will begin, using the carbon sequestration data as a basis for what should be offered. There are fears about corruption; and the dispersal of money remains a sketchy and murky affair but, as Rai says, "the idea is that you at least need to get this thing started. If you don't pay people enough to maintain the forest, give me two reasons why they should keep the forests as they are, so that you or I could come and enjoy them? Because they are the ones who have to face the winters here, they are the ones who have to go and work in the forests here." Consultations are ongoing with villagers, various NGOs and the forest department. Once upon a time, the strong social system – the ecologically minded functioning of the rural villages extolled by Gandhi – and dependence on the forest meant the environment was preserved. Now, these things are changing fairly rapidly. The whole idea of working as a social group is getting lost and so, Rai argues, "incentives are going to play a larger role. I've had conversations with people where they've said, 'The forests are great, we want to protect them but we don't have any money.' So it's not just about giving them an incentive to protect the forest, it's that they need money to protect the forest." With the data now collected, allometric equations will determine how much carbon is sequestered in the forests. This information will then be used to put an economic value on the various plots, which will translate into payments made to local communities through the forest councils. This money could begin to pour in within the year. During my time in Kumaon, the Paris Climate Change Conference takes place. When I ask Rajesh Thadani how CEDAR's project fits into the bigger picture, he says: "Carbon sinks are important and a good mitigation measure – but [they] would be effective only in conjunction with other measures." I watch some of the news coverage from Paris with Rai. There is so much to be done, so many vested interests to vanquish. "I find it extremely political," Rai says. "Climate change talks are an interesting window into how the world that doesn't actually work on scientific principles or doesn't understand the science behind global warming – which is an extremely complicated science – operates. I find it interesting, working in a forest over here, to hear about these things; interesting and funny." As the world fights over how best to tackle climate change – over how, more importantly, to get any of the world's big polluters to do anything differently – a battle about how this global phenomenon should be understood and dealt with takes place in the foothills of the Himalayas. "Darkly funny?" I ask Rai for his assessment. "Yeah, gallows humour." This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Women on the march In the last weekend of November, Sophie Walker took to the stage at the Women's Equality Party's first conference to make her leader's speech and, within a few minutes, began weeping. She cried as she recounted the difficulties of being a single parent trying to access services for her autistic daughter: "Finding out that no one was interested, no one cared, no one welcomed her as person who lived differently." This wasn't just a stray tear, brushed away. Walker (pictured above) seemed to be struggling to go on. The conference held its breath. I gripped the sides of my chair in a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment, thinking this wasn't going to go down well in the media, that she would be mocked for feebleness; what kind of leader, faced with an audience of hundreds, stands in front of them and cries at life's defeats? It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that this had been one of the most significant, and, yes, persuasive moments of the entire event. Walker could hardly have made her point – that her daughter's diagnosis had punctured her own privilege as a white, university-educated journalist (and tall and beautiful, which she did not say but which is nevertheless probably relevant) – more tellingly. Her tears powerfully conveyed her devastation at feeling her child was destined, as she put it, either to be invisible or to be exposed, and the helplessness this induced. The Women's Equality party conference was awash with talk about women 'doing politics differently'. The phrase was trotted out repeatedly, although it wasn't entirely clear what it actually meant. This week, as hundreds of thousands of women prepare to march on Washington on Saturday following the inauguration of Donald Trump (with marches in 200 other US cities and more than 50 others worldwide, including across the UK and in London, where Sophie Walker will be one of the speakers) this seems a good moment to try to pin down whether there is anything new about 21st-century women's activism and, if so, what it is. There are two ways in which women might potentially 'do politics differently': policy, and practice. As far as the former is concerned, the Women's Equality party is promoting broad areas of policy capable of attracting women from across the traditional political spectrum, including closing the gender pay gap, subsidising childcare, ending violence against women, and equal representation in business, politics and the media. Detail and delivery would be more fraught, but, for now, these are things most women can get behind. Both Nicky Morgan, former Conservative Education Secretary, and Sal Brinton, President of the Liberal Democrats, spoke at the conference. It is in its practice, though, that women's activism has real potential to enlarge our understanding of what it means to be political. Among the variety of reasons for Brexit and Trump, rage was right up there. Emotion is back in fashion. The Brexiters and Trump eschewed rational arguments in favour of pleas to feeling. Trump is President of Emotions. (Sad!) Yet we are ill-equipped to understand this outbreak of feeling, as Pankaj Mishra argues in his forthcoming book, The Age of Anger, because our dominant intellectual concepts are incapable of comprehending the role of emotion in politics. Since the Enlightenment, Mishra argues, our political thinking has been ever more tightly gripped by materialist, mechanistic premises – for example by the idea that "humans are essentially rational and motivated by the pursuit of their own interests; that they principally act to maximise personal happiness, rather than on the basis of fear, anger and resentment." Homo economicus , he says, "views the market as the ideal form of human interaction and venerates technological progress and the growth of GDP. All of this is part of the rigid contemporary belief that what counts is only what can be counted and that what cannot be counted – subjective emotions – therefore does not." There is no room in this world view for more complex motivations: vanity, say, or the fear of humiliation. How, then, to comprehend, let alone articulate, the vulnerability, the shame, the loss of identity created by inequality, job losses and purposeless communities? The roiling emotions engendered by capitalism's failure to confer the promised general prosperity cannot be understood when emotion is a thing men are meant to contain, then repudiate. Strongmen leaders do not stand in front of their political parties and weep about their daughters. That sort of thing is for losers. Male valour is about not showing emotional distress. (This is very deeply embedded in our culture: "Thy tears are womanish," Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence scolds Romeo, although Romeo has every right to be upset, because he has just killed a man, who was Juliet's cousin.) Emotion is stigmatised as belonging to lesser, non-normative groups. Women are hysterical. Black men are hypersexual. Homosexuals are unreliably camp. There is no option for the would-be winners, competing to maximise their self-interest, to respond to injury by saying, "Please, that's painful!" – still less by weeping. The emotion is there, nevertheless, metastasising. Since men without the means to express vulnerability cannot mourn frankly their loss of identity as a provider (let alone their disorientation when other groups threaten to undermine their unearned sense of superiority), injured masculinity must disguise itself in images of strength, mastery, honour. Trump himself is a personification of this phenomenon, as Laurie Penny has observed: "At once an emblem of violent, impenetrable masculinity – the nasally-rigid, iron-hearted business Svengali determined to slap America until it stops snivelling – and a byword for hysterical sensitivity, a wailing man-baby with a hair-trigger temper." All this emotion-with-nowhere-to-go was seized on by the Trump and Brexit campaigns. They found a way to channel it, allowing electorates to associate themselves with winning, to bray 'losers' at people they didn't like. It turned out not to matter very much what they were winning at or where it took them. Getting Trump into the White House, like Brexit, was an end in itself, a way of displacing pain, therapeutic. It was also deeply reactionary. The hideous inequalities of global capitalism being what they are, it is hard for the 99 per cent to conceive of themselves becoming winners as things stand – so Trump and Brexit offered instead a return to fantasies of the past. The iconography of Brexit has its roots in Britain's resistance to the Nazis (conveniently overlooking small things like imperial reach and American intervention), while the Trump campaign's "make America great again" offered still more explicit nostalgia for a time when the nation had a common destiny, with white men front and centre. What women's activism might bring to politics is a different sensibility, one that acknowledges that emotions are inevitable, messy – and necessary. There is a hole in politics where opposition used to be and social democracy used to flourish. That is largely because rational arguments, facts, expertise, seem to bear too little relation to the way that many people feel about the world. The liberals' arguments seem to be conducted in a kind of parallel universe, of interest only to those who thrive there. When called to articulate a vision for Britain in Europe, the best Remainers could manage was an abstract account of financial penalties if the electorate didn't do as it was told – which, since it never connected, was easily dismissed as 'Project Fear'. People have not, in fact, lost interest in truth. But first and foremost, they know the truth of their emotional relationship to the world. Liberals and social democrats currently have no way of addressing this. A lot of the time, they appear to be talking gobbledygook. The populist right has found an emotive way to engage electorates by channelling their feelings, often displacing them onto someone else in the process. If you cannot look at yourself in the mirror – because anxiousness makes you feel weak and to be weak is to be a failed human being – you are prey to finding someone else to blame for your loss of dignity. In a world of competition, the only way to self-esteem is to be a winner. And someone else must therefore become the loser. There is an alternative: a politics that begins with the notion that emotions do not have to be repressed or deformed into bigotry and abuse. An understanding of feelings that does not equate weakness with shame, and compassion with maladaptive weakness, is much more likely to suggest solutions than one that denies our emotional lives, most of what makes us human. When people admit to their emotions, they call for empathy; they can galvanise action. "And the government's name for a single mother raising two children and caring for her elderly father?" Sophie Walker asked, in her conference speech, promptly supplying the (clearly absurd) answer: 'Economically inactive'. Walker's single mother is of no importance in the Trump/Farage fantasy land of winning, greatness, the deal, othering the outsider. The unpaid work of caring is about love; it entails vulnerability, which immediately makes it suspect in a world of winning and losing, in which the only permissible emotions are triumph and mocking schadenfreude. The prevailing political mood of the moment is anxiety. "To live a modern life anywhere in the world today," Mark Lilla wrote recently in the New York Times, "subject to perpetual social and technological transformation, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution. Anxiety in the face of this process is now a universal experience, which is why reactionary ideas attract adherents around the world who share little except their sense of historical betrayal." When liberals make pious noises about understanding the anxiety of constituents who have turned away from them, their solution often seems to entail taking on some of the bigotry. You don't have to look very far to find those who believe that feminism is inadequate to the task of humanising politics because it is, in fact, part of the problem. Lilla, in another piece in the New York Times, and Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, have each argued that the policing of language and behaviour – which some call courtesy – has provoked a backlash and so must bear some of the blame for populism. The logical extension of this argument is that feminists, along with Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ activists and other assorted 'snowflakes', need to take a step back and think about just how much damage they're doing. The problem is that this assumes white men's lives are neutral territory around which the common interest can coalesce. It is, in other words, male identity politics. "There has been a massive backlash by white men," Sophie Walker told me, at the WE party headquarters in Bermondsey, a few weeks after the conference speech. "We are living out the identity politics of the straight white man right now." If we are not to face a breakdown to essentialist tribal identities of gender and race, people have to find a way of articulating feelings of distress in a way that doesn't humiliate them. If men cannot face their anxiety, it will be denied, and then absolutely nothing will be done to alleviate it; there will be a privatisation of misery. There are structural reasons for the explosion of mental health disorders in advanced economies, for the opiate addiction in the rustbelt, the epidemic of distress among young people, other sorts of self-harm. But if we can't acknowledge the underlying dread and helplessness that people experience in the face of a world controlled by global finance capital and incomprehensible algorithms, individuals will continue to be stigmatised as failing. Either you will be a winner, an entrepreneurial individual competing freely in the market, deflecting your distress by manning up, lashing out; or your inchoate feelings of desperation will be – sorry – your problem, mate. A female sensibility in politics is not, it probably needs saying, antithetical to reason, even though feeling and reason are often posited as opposites. Plato contrasted the wild horse of passion and the wise charioteer of reason (his point being, of course, that they needed each other). Jane Austen would have had no plots without the frequent difficulty human beings have in accommodating desire and wisdom: success, as she repeatedly shows, lies in the reconciliation of sense and sensibility. Such an accommodation requires self-examination, generosity of spirit, fidelity to self, and hard thinking. But first and foremost, it takes an honesty about feeling. I used to get mildly irritated when feminists focused too hard on female representation, when there seemed so many other pressing things to talk about, as if vaginas alone made a difference. And it is true that there is a glass-ceiling feminism that takes little heed of women for whom race, class, disability and/or sexuality intersect to intensify and redouble gender discrimination. But sheer numbers of women do make a difference. Nicky Morgan notes that women in parliament are more inclined to collaborate across party than men. Sal Brinton, who has had a lifetime of being a lone woman on decision-making bodies, says that when women get to 40 per cent in a meeting or on a board, the language changes. There's a different way of conducting business, a different sense of how to move things on. In a hall overwhelmingly dominated by women, it is possible for a leader to cry and everyone to be on her side. For no one to think (after a moment of adjustment from unreconstructed be-more-like-a-man feminists like me) that you're weak. Over the coming months and years, progressives are going to have to grapple with what kind of emotional appeal they can make beyond the populists' exploitative deformation of feeling. The task will be to retrieve emotion from its current co-option into a minatory, ultimately self-defeating way of looking at the world. Women are not (of course) alone in identifying the need for soul in politics. Robert Musil and Stephen Toulmin, among others, have identified that there was a highly rationalistic and scientific turn in Enlightenment thinking after Descartes and Newton. Had the Enlightenment developed instead out of the vision of Montaigne, or Shakespeare, the thinking goes, it would have made more room for kindness, and would have given us a fuller, more complex and nuanced account of human experience. In the current destabilised times, people are returning to their ideas. Perhaps women's activism can give us all a way into reconnecting with a different, more generous apprehension of the Enlightenment. By caring about caring, for example – not as an abstract problem that acts as a brake on the economy, but because caring is about love, family, community, humanity. By reminding men that it is possible to acknowledge pain and survive, and then get stronger. As the political ground shifts under our feet and old allegiances and responses turn out to be no use to us, we are going to need to find a different language of politics. And the language of women is where we should start. Top image: Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party, speaking at the party's first annual conference, in Manchester, November 2016 (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Open Access: Casualties Will a general shift to OA leave casualties? For example, will rising levels of green OA trigger cancellations of toll-access journals? This question matters for those publishers (not all publishers) who fear the answer is yes and for those activists (not all activists) who hope the answer is yes. So far, unfortunately, it doesn’t have a simple yes-or-no answer, and most discussions replace evidence with fearful or hopeful predictions. The primary drivers of green OA are policies at universities and funding agencies. Remember, all university policies allow publishers to protect themselves at will. (See section 4.1 on policies.) For example, universities with loophole or deposit mandates will not provide green OA when publishers do not allow it. Universities with Harvard-style rights-retention mandates will not provide OA when authors obtain waivers or when publishers require authors to obtain waivers as a condition of publication. Hence, publishers who worry about the effect of university OA policies on subscriptions have the remedy in their own hands. Faculty needn’t paternalize publishers by voting down OA policies when publishers can protect themselves whenever they see the need to do so. The experience at Harvard since February 2008 is that very few publishers see the need to do so. Fewer than a handful systematically require waivers from Harvard authors. This chapter, then, focuses on the strongest green OA mandates at funding agencies, like the Wellcome Trust and NIH, which allow no opt-outs for publishers or grantees. Will strong green OA policies of that kind trigger cancellations of toll-access journals? Here are 10 parts of any complete answer. 1. Nobody knows yet how green OA policies will affect journal subscriptions. Rising levels of green OA may trigger toll-access journal cancellations, or they may not. So far they haven’t. 2. The evidence from physics is the most relevant. Physics has the highest levels and longest history of green OA. The evidence from physics to date is that high levels of green OA don’t cause journal cancellations. On the contrary, the relationship between arXiv (the OA repository for physics) and toll-access physics journals is more symbiotic than antagonistic. Physicists have been self-archiving since 1991, far longer than in any other field. In some subfields, such as particle physics, the rate of OA archiving approaches 100 percent, far higher than in any other field. If high-volume green OA caused journal cancellations, we’d see the effect first in physics. But it hasn’t happened. Two leading publishers of physics journals, the American Physical Society (APS) and Institute of Physics (IOP), have publicly acknowledged that they’ve seen no cancellations attributable to OA archiving. In fact, the APS and IOP have not only made peace with arXiv but now accept submissions from it and even host their own mirrors of it. 3. Other fields may not behave like physics. We won’t know more until the levels of green OA in other fields approach those in physics. It would definitely help to understand why the experience in physics has gone as it has and how far it might predict the experience in other fields. But so far it’s fair to say that we don’t know all the variables and that publishers who oppose green OA mandates are not among those showing a serious interest in them. When publisher lobbyists argue that high-volume green OA will undermine toll-access journal subscriptions, they don’t offer evidence, don’t acknowledge the countervailing evidence from physics, don’t rebut the evidence from physics, and don’t qualify their own conclusions in light of it. They would act more like scientific publishers if they acknowledged the evidence from physics and then argued, as well as they could, either that the experience in physics will change or that fields other than physics will have a different experience. An October 2004 editorial in The Lancet (an Elsevier journal) called on the publishing lobby to do better. “[A]s editors of a journal that publishes research funded by the NIH, we disagree with [Association of American Publishers President Patricia Schroeder’s] central claim. Widening access to research [through green OA mandates] is unlikely to bring the edifice of scientific publishing crashing down. Schroeder provides no evidence that it would do so; she merely asserts the threat. This style of rebuttal will not do. . . .” For more than eight years, green OA mandates have applied to research in many fields outside physics. These mandates are natural experiments and we’re still monitoring their effects. At Congressional hearings in 2008 and 2010, legislators asked publishers directly whether green OA was triggering cancellations. In both cases, publishers pointed to decreased downloads but not to increased cancellations. 4. There is evidence that green OA decreases downloads from publishers’ web sites. When users know about OA and toll-access editions of the same article, many will prefer to click through to the OA edition, either because they aren’t affiliated with a subscribing institution or because authentication is a hassle. Moreover, when users find an OA edition, most stop looking. But decreased downloads are not the same thing as decreased or canceled subscriptions. Moreover, decreased downloads of toll-access editions from publisher web sites are not the same thing as decreased downloads overall. No one suggests that green OA leads to decreased overall downloads, that is, fewer readers and less reading. On the contrary, the same evidence suggesting that OA increases citation impact also suggests that it increases readers and reading. 5. Most publishers voluntarily permit green OA. Supplementing the natural experiments of green OA mandates are the natural experiments of publishers who voluntarily permit green OA. The Nature Publishing Group is more conservative than most toll-access publishers by requiring a six-month embargo on green OA, but more progressive than most by positively encouraging green OA. NPG reported the latest results of its multidisciplinary natural experiment in January 2011: “We have, to date, found author self-archiving compatible with subscription business models, and so we have been actively encouraging self-archiving since 2005.” This or something similar to it must be the experience of the majority of toll-access publishers who voluntarily permit green OA. Even if they don’t actively encourage green OA, most permit it without embargo. If they found that it triggered cancellations, they would stop. 6. Green OA mandates leave standing at least four library incentives to maintain their subscriptions to toll-access journals. Even the strongest no-loophole, no-waiver policies preserve incentives to maintain toll-access journal subscriptions. First, all funder OA mandates include an embargo period to protect publishers. For example, the OA mandates at the Research Councils UK allow an embargo of up to six months after publication. The NIH allows an embargo of up to twelve months. Libraries wanting to provide immediate access will still have an incentive to subscribe. Second, all funder OA mandates apply to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, not to the published version. If the journal provides copyediting after peer review, then the policies do not apply to the copyedited version, let alone to the formatted, paginated published edition. Libraries wanting to provide access to copyedited published editions will still have an incentive to subscribe. The purpose of these two policy provisions is precisely to protect publishers against cancellations. They are deliberate concessions to publishers, adopted voluntarily by funding agencies as compromises with the public interest in immediate OA to the best editions. When we put the two together, we see that funder-mandated OA copies of peer-reviewed manuscripts won’t compete with toll-access copies of the published editions for six to twelve months, and there will never be OA copies of the more desirable published editions unless publishers voluntarily allow them. Publishers retain life-of-copyright exclusivity on the published editions. Even if OA archiving does eventually erode subscriptions outside physics, publishers have longer and better protection from these effects than their lobbyists ever acknowledge. Third, funder OA mandates only apply to research articles, not to the many other kinds of content published in scholarly journals, such as letters, editorials, review articles, book reviews, announcements, news, conference information, and so on. Libraries wanting to provide access to these other kinds of content will still have an incentive to subscribe. Fourth, funder OA mandates only apply to articles arising from research funded by the mandating agency. Very few journals publish nothing but articles from a single funder, or even from a set of funders all of whom have OA mandates. Libraries wanting to provide access to all the research articles in a journal, regardless of the sources of funding, will still have an incentive to subscribe. This incentive will weaken as more and more funders adopt OA mandates, but we’re very far from universal funder mandates. As we get closer, unfunded research will still fall outside this category and the three other incentives above will still stand. The Association of College and Research Libraries addressed subscription incentives in a 2004 open letter on the NIH policy: “We wish to emphasize, above all, that academic libraries will not cancel journal subscriptions as a result of this plan. . . . Even if libraries wished to consider the availability of NIH-funded articles when making journal cancellation decisions, they would have no reasonable way of determining what articles in specific journals would become openly accessible after the embargo period.” 7. Some studies bear on the question of whether increased OA archiving will increase journal cancellations. In a 2006 study from the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), Chris Beckett and Simon Inger asked 400 librarians about the relative weight of different factors in their decisions to cancel subscriptions. Other things being equal, the librarians preferred free content to priced content and short embargoes to longer ones. Publishers interpret this to mean that the rise of OA archiving will cause cancellations. The chief flaw with the study is its artificiality. For example, the survey did not ask about specific journals by name but only about resources with abstractly stipulated levels of quality. It also disregarded faculty input on cancellation decisions when all librarians acknowledge that faculty input is decisive. The result was a study of hypothetical preferences, not actual cancellation decisions. A less hypothetical study was commissioned by publishers themselves in the same year. From the summary: The three most important factors used to determine journals for cancellation, in declining order of importance, are that the faculty no longer require it . . . , usage and price. Next, availability of the content via open access (OA) archives and availability via aggregators were ranked equal fourth, but some way behind the first three factors. The journal’s impact factor and availability via delayed OA were ranked relatively unimportant. . . . With regard to OA archives, there was a great deal of support for the idea that they would not directly impact journal subscriptions. In short, toll-access journals have more to fear from their own price increases than from rising levels of green OA. Publishers who keep raising their prices aggravate the access problem for researchers and aggravate the sustainability problem for themselves. If the same publishers blame green OA and lobby against green OA policies, then they obstruct the solution for researchers and do very little to improve their own sustainability. 8. OA may increase submissions and subscriptions. Some subscription journals have found that OA after an embargo period, even a very short one like two months, actually increases submissions and subscriptions. For example, this was the experience of the American Society for Cell Biology and its journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell. Medknow saw its submissions and subscriptions increase when it began offering unembargoed full-text editions of its journals alongside its toll-access print journals. Hindawi Publishing saw its submissions rise steadily after it converted all its peer-reviewed journals to OA in 2007. Looking back on several years of rapidly growing submissions, company founder and CEO Ahmed Hindawi said in January 2010, “It is clear now more than ever that our open access conversion . . . was the best management decision we have taken. . . .” 9. Some publishers fear that green OA will increase pressure to convert to gold OA. Some publishers fear that rising levels of green OA will not only trigger toll-access journal cancellations but also increase pressure to convert to gold OA. (Likewise, some OA activists hope for this outcome.) There are two responses to this two-fold fear. The fear of toll-access cancellations disregards the relevant evidence in points 1–8 above. The fear of conversion to gold OA also disregards relevant evidence, such as Ahmed Hindawi’s testimony above, and the testimony of Springer CEO Derk Haank. In 2008 when Springer bought BioMed Central and became the world’s largest OA publisher, Haank said: “[W]e see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade.” (Also see chapter 7 on economics.) Publishers inexperienced with gold OA needn’t defer to publishers with more experience, but they should at least study them. In fact, OA publishing might be more sustainable than TA publishing, as toll-access prices and the volume of research both grow faster than library budgets. (See section 2.1 on problems.) If publishers acknowledge that gold OA can be sustainable, and even profitable, and merely wish to avoid making lower margins than they make today, then their objection takes on a very different color. They’re not at risk of insolvency, just reduced profits, and they’re not asserting a need for self-protection, just an entitlement to current levels of profit. There’s no reason for public funding agencies acting in the public interest, or private funders acting for charitable purposes, to compromise their missions in order to satisfy that sense of publisher entitlement. 10. Green OA policies are justified even if they do create risks for toll-access journals. If we’re only interested in the effect of rising levels of green OA on toll-access publishers, then we can stop at points 1–9. But if we’re interested in good policy, then we must add one more factor: Even if green OA does eventually threaten toll-access journal subscriptions, green OA policies are still justified. I won’t elaborate this point here, since it takes us beyond the topic of casualties to the full case for OA, which is spread throughout the rest of the book. But here’s one way to put the debate in perspective: There are good reasons to want to know whether rising levels of green OA will trigger cancellations of toll-access journals, and perhaps even to modify our policies in light of what we learn. But there are no good reasons to put the thriving of incumbent toll-access journals and publishers ahead of the thriving of research itself.

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Open Access: Policies 4.1 OA Policies at Funding Agencies and Universities Authors control the volume and growth of OA. They decide whether to submit their work to OA journals (gold OA), whether to deposit their work in OA repositories (green OA), and how to use their copyrights. But scholarly authors are still largely unfamiliar with their OA options. It’s pointless to appeal to them as a bloc because they don’t act as a bloc. It’s not hard to persuade or even excite them once we catch their attention, but because they are so anarchical, overworked, and preoccupied, it’s hard to catch their attention. Fortunately, funding agencies and universities are discovering their own interests in fostering OA. These nonprofit institutions make it their mission to advance research and to make that research as useful and widely available as possible. Their money frees researchers to do their work and avoid the need to tie their income to the popularity of their ideas. Above all, these institutions are in an unparalleled position to influence author decisions. Today, more than fifty funding agencies and more than one hundred universities have adopted strong OA policies. Each one depends on the primacy of author decisions. One kind of policy, better than nothing, requests or encourages OA. A stronger kind of policy requires OA or makes it the default for new work. These stronger policies are usually called OA mandates and I’ll use that term for lack of a better one (but see section 4.2 on how it’s misleading). Request or encouragement policies These merely ask faculty to make their work OA, or recommend OA for their new work. Sometimes they’re called resolutions or pledges rather than policies. Encouragement policies can target green and gold OA equally. By contrast, mandates only make sense for green OA, at least today when OA journals constitute only about one-quarter of peer-reviewed journals. A gold OA mandate would put most peer-reviewed journals off-limits and seriously limit faculty freedom to submit their work to the journals of their choice. This problem doesn’t arise for green OA mandates. Fortunately, this is well understood. There are no gold OA mandates anywhere; all OA mandates are green. Unfortunately, however, many people mistakenly believe that all OA is gold OA and therefore mistake proposed green OA mandates for proposed gold OA mandates and raise objections that would only apply to gold OA mandates. But as more academics understand the green/gold distinction, and understand that well-written green OA mandates are compatible with academic freedom, more institutions are adopting green OA mandates, almost always at the initiative of faculty themselves. At universities, there are roughly three approaches to green OA mandates: Loophole mandates These require green OA except when the author’s publisher doesn’t allow it. Deposit mandates These require deposit in an OA repository as soon as the article is accepted for publication, but they separate the timing of deposit from the timing of OA. If the author’s publisher doesn’t allow OA, then these policies keep the deposited article dark or non-OA. If the publisher allows OA, immediately or after some embargo, then the deposit becomes OA as soon as the permission kicks in. Because most publishers allow OA on some timetable, this method will provide OA to most new work in due time. Deposit mandates generally depend on publisher permission for OA, just like loophole mandates. The difference is that they require deposit even when they can’t obtain permission for OA. Rights-retention mandates These require deposit in an OA repository as soon as the article is accepted for publication, just like deposit mandates. But they add a method to secure permission for making the deposit OA. There’s more than one way to secure that permission. At the Wellcome Trust and NIH, which pioneered this approach for funding agencies, when grantees publish articles based on their funded research they must retain the nonexclusive right to authorize OA through a repository. At Harvard, which pioneered this approach for universities, faculty members vote to give the university a standing nonexclusive right (among other nonexclusive rights) to make their future work OA through the institutional repository. When faculty publish articles after that, the university already has the needed permission, and faculty needn’t take any special steps to retain rights or negotiate with publishers. Nor need they wait for the publisher’s embargo to run. Harvard-style policies also give faculty a waiver option, allowing them to opt out of the grant of permission to the university, though not out of the deposit requirement. When faculty members obtain waivers for given works, then Harvard-style mandates operate like deposit mandates and the works remain dark deposits until the institution has permission to make them OA. Many OA policies are crossbreeds rather than pure types, but all the policies I’ve seen are variations on these four themes. First note that none of the three “mandates” absolutely requires OA. Loophole mandates allow some work to escape through the loophole. Deposit mandates allow some deposited work to remain dark (non-OA), by following publisher preferences. Rights-retention mandates with waiver options allow some work to remain dark, by following author preferences. Loophole and deposit policies defer to publishers for permissions, while rights-retention policies obtain permission from authors before they transfer rights to publishers. For loophole and deposit policies, permission is contingent, because some publishers are willing and some are not. For rights-retention policies, permission is assured, at least initially or by default, although authors may opt out for any publication. When loophole policies can’t provide OA, covered works needn’t make it to the repository even as dark deposits. When deposit and rights-retention policies can’t provide OA, at least they require dark deposit for the texts, and OA for the metadata (information about author, title, date, and so on). Releasing the metadata makes even a dark deposit visible to readers and search engines. Moreover, many repositories support an email-request button for works on dark deposit. The button enables a reader to submit a one-click request for a full-text email copy and enables the author to grant or deny the request with a one-click response. We could say that rights-retention policies require OA except when authors opt out, or that they simply shift the default to OA. Those are two ways of saying the same thing because, either way, faculty remain free to decide for or against OA for each of their publications. Preserving this freedom and making it conspicuous help muster faculty support, indeed, unanimous faculty votes. Because shifting the default is enough to change behavior on a large scale, waiver options don’t significantly reduce the volume of OA. At Harvard the waiver rate is less than 5 percent, and at MIT it’s less than 2 percent. Loophole policies and rights-retention policies both offer opt-outs. But loophole policies give the opt-out to publishers and rights-retention policies give it to authors. The difference is significant because many more authors than publishers want OA for research articles. Many institutions adopt loophole policies because they believe a blanket exemption for dissenting publishers is the only way to avoid copyright problems. But that is not true. Deposit policies don’t make works OA until publishers allow OA, and rights-retention policies close the loophole and obtain permission directly from authors at a time when authors are the copyright holders. OA policies from funding agencies are very much like OA policies from universities. They can encourage green and gold OA, or they can require green OA. If they require green OA, they can do so in one of the three ways above. If there’s a difference, it’s that when funders adopt a rights-retention mandate, they typically don’t offer waiver options. On the contrary, the Wellcome Trust and NIH require their grantees to make their work OA through a certain OA repository on a certain timetable and to retain the right to authorize that OA. If a given publisher will not allow grantees to comply with their prior funding agreement, then grantees must look for another publisher. There are two reasons why these strong funder policies don’t infringe faculty freedom to submit work to their journals of their choice. First, researchers needn’t seek funds from these funders. When they choose to do so, then they agree to the OA provisions, just as they agree to the other terms and conditions of the grant. The OA “mandate” is a condition on a voluntary contract, not an unconditional requirement. It’s a reasonable condition as well, since public funders, like the NIH, disburse public money in the public interest, and private funders, like the Wellcome Trust, disburse charitable money for charitable purposes. To my knowledge, no researchers have refused to apply for Wellcome or NIH funds because of the OA condition, even when they plan to publish in OA-averse journals. The OA condition benefits authors and has not been a deal-breaker. Second, virtually all publishers accommodate these policies. For example, no surveyed publishers anywhere refuse to publish work by NIH-funded authors on account of the agency’s OA mandate. Hence, in practice grantees may still submit work to the journals of their choice, even without a waiver option to accommodate holdout publishers. We should never forget that most toll-access journals already allow green OA and that a growing number of high-quality, high-prestige peer-reviewed journal are gold OA. From one point of view, we don’t need OA mandates when authors already plan to publish in one of those journals. But sometimes toll-access journals change their positions on green OA. Sometimes authors don’t get around to making their work green OA even when their journals allow it. And sometimes authors don’t publish in one of those journals. The final rationale for green OA mandates, then, is for institutions to bring about OA for their entire research output, regardless of how publishers might alter their policies, regardless of author inertia, and regardless of the journals in which faculty or grantees choose to publish. Green OA mandates don’t assure OA to the entire research output of a university or funding agency, for the same reason that they don’t require OA without qualification. But implementing them provides OA to a much larger percentage of the research output than was already headed toward OA journals or OA repositories, and does so while leaving authors free to submit their work to the journals of their choice. I’ve only tried to give a rough taxonomy of OA policies and their supporting arguments. For detailed recommendations on OA policy provisions, and specific arguments for them, see my 2009 analysis of policy options for funding agencies and universities. I’ve also focused here on OA policies for peer-reviewed research articles. Many universities have adopted OA mandates for theses and dissertations, and many funder OA policies also cover datasets. A growing number of universities supplement OA mandates for articles with a sensible and effective policy to assure compliance: When faculty come up for promotion or tenure, the review committee will only consider journal articles on deposit in the institutional repository. 4.2 Digression on the Word “Mandate” The strongest OA policies use words like “must” or “shall” and require or seem to require OA. They’re commonly called OA “mandates.” But all three varieties of university “mandate” above show why the term is misleading. Loophole mandates don’t require OA without qualification: when publishers dissent, articles are either not deposited in the repository or not made OA. Deposit mandates don’t require OA without qualification: when publishers dissent, articles are deposited in a repository but are not made OA. Rights-retention mandates with waiver options don’t require OA without qualification: authors may obtain waivers and sometimes do. I haven’t seen a university OA “mandate” anywhere without at least one of these three kinds of flexibility. That’s the main reason why no university policies require OA without qualification. There are a few more. First, as Harvard’s Stuart Shieber frequently argues, even the strongest university policies can’t make tenured faculty comply. Second, as I’ve frequently argued, successful policies are implemented through expectations, education, incentives, and assistance, not coercion. Third, even the strongest policies—even the no-loophole, no-deference, no-waiver policies at the Wellcome Trust and NIH—make OA a condition on a voluntary contract. No policy anywhere pretends to impose an unconditional OA requirement, and it’s hard to imagine how any policy could even try. (“You must make your work OA even if you don’t work for us or use our funds”?) Unfortunately, we don’t have a good vocabulary for policies that use mandatory language while deferring to third-person dissents or offering first-person opt-outs. Nor do we have a good vocabulary for policies that use mandatory language and replace enforcement with compliance-building through expectations, education, incentives, and assistance. The word “mandate” is not a very good fit for policies like this, but neither is any other English word. By contrast, we do have a good word for policies that use mandatory language for those who agree to be bound. We call them “contracts.” While “contract” is short, accurate, and unfrightening, it puts the accent on the author’s consent to be bound. That’s often illuminating, but just as often we want to put the accent on the content’s destiny to become OA. For that purpose, “mandate” has become the term of art, for better or worse. I use “mandate” with reluctance because it can frighten some of the people I’m trying to persuade and can give rise to misunderstandings about the policies behind the label. When we have time and space for longer phrases, we can talk about “putting an OA condition” on research grants, in the case of NIH-style policies, or “shifting the default to OA” for faculty research, in the case of Harvard-style policies. These longer expressions are more accurate and less frightening. However, sometimes we need a shorthand term, and we need a term that draws an appropriately sharp contrast with policies that merely request or encourage OA. If anyone objects that a policy containing mandatory language and a waiver option isn’t really a “mandate,” I won’t disagree. On the contrary, I applaud them for recognizing a nuance which too many others overlook. (It’s depressing how many PhDs can read a policy with mandatory language and a waiver option, notice the mandatory language, overlook the waiver option, and then cite the lack of flexibility as an objection.) But denying that a policy is a mandate can create its own kinds of misunderstanding. In the United States, citizens called for jury duty must appear, even if many can claim exemptions and go home again. We can say that jury duty with exemptions isn’t really a “duty,” provided we don’t conclude that it’s merely a request and encouragement. Finally, a common misunderstanding deliberately promulgated by some publishers is that OA must be “mandated” because faculty don’t want it. This position gets understandable but regrettable mileage from the word “mandate.” It also overlooks decisive counter-evidence that we’ve had in hand since 2004. Alma Swan’s empirical studies of researcher attitudes show that an overwhelming majority of researchers would “willingly” comply with a mandatory OA policy from their funder or employer. The most recent evidence of faculty willingness is the stunning series of strong OA policies adopted by unanimous faculty votes. (When is the last time you heard of a unanimous faculty vote for anything, let alone anything of importance?) As recently as 2007, speculation that we’d soon see more than two dozen unanimous faculty votes for OA policies would have been dismissed as wishful thinking. But now that the evidence lies before us, what looks like wishful thinking is the publishing lobby’s idea that OA must be mandated because faculty don’t want it. Finally, the fact that faculty vote unanimously for strong OA policies is a good reason to keep looking for a better word than “mandate.” At least it’s a good reason to look past the colloquial implications of the term to the policies themselves and the players who drafted and adopted them. Since 2008, most OA “mandates” at universities have been self-imposed by faculty. 4.3 Digression on the Historical Timing of OA Policies Some kinds of strong OA policy that are politically unattainable or unwise today may become attainable and wise in the future. Here are three examples. Today, a libre green mandate (say, one giving users the right to copy and redistribute, not just access for reading) would face serious publisher resistance. Even if the policy included rights retention and didn’t depend on publishers for permissions, publisher resistance would still matter because publishers possess—and ought to possess—the right to refuse to publish any work for any reason. They could refuse to publish authors bound by a libre green policy, or they could insist on a waiver from the policy as a condition of publication. Policies triggering rejections hurt authors, and policies driving up waiver rates don’t do much to help OA. However, publisher resistance might diminish as the ratio of OA publishers to toll-access publishers tilts toward OA, as spontaneous author submissions shift toward OA journals, or as the number of institutions with libre green mandates makes resistance more costly than accommodation for publishers. When OA policies are toothless, few in number, or concentrated in small institutions, then they must accommodate publishers in order to avoid triggering rejections and hurting authors. But as policies grow in number, scope, and strength, the situation could flip over, and publishers will have to accommodate OA policies in order to avoid hurting themselves by rejecting too many good authors for reasons unrelated to the quality of their work. Today, a gold OA mandate would limit faculty freedom to submit work to the journals of their choice. But that’s because today only about 25 percent of peer-reviewed journals are OA. As this percentage grows, then a gold OA mandate’s encroachment on academic freedom shrinks. At some point even the most zealous defenders of faculty freedom may decide that the encroachment is negligible. In principle the encroachment could be zero, though of course when the encroachment is zero, and gold OA mandates are harmless, then gold OA mandates would also be unnecessary. Today, faculty voting for a rights-retention OA mandate want a waiver option, and when the option is available their votes tend to be overwhelming or unanimous. But there are several circumstances that might make it attractive for faculty to abolish waiver options or make waivers harder to obtain. One is a shift in faculty perspective that makes access to research more urgent than indulging publishers who erect access barriers. Another is a significant rise in publisher acceptance of green OA, which gives virtually all authors—rather than just most—blanket permission for green OA. In the first case, faculty might “vote with their submissions” and steer clear of publishers who don’t allow author-initiated green OA. In the second case, faculty would virtually never encounter such publishers. In the first case, they’d seldom want waivers, and the second they’d seldom need waivers. It’s understandable that green gratis mandates are spreading faster than green libre mandates, that green mandates in general are spreading faster than gold mandates, and that rights-retention policies with waiver options are spreading faster than rights-retention policies without waivers. However, there is modest growth on one of these fronts: green libre mandates. The case against these three kinds of OA policy is time-sensitive, not permanent. It’s circumstantial, and circumstances are changing. But the strategy for institutions wanting to remove access barriers to research is unchanging: they should adopt the strongest policies they can today and watch for the moment when they could strengthen them. As researchers become more familiar with OA, as more institutions adopt OA policies, as more new literature is covered by strong OA policies, as more toll-access journals convert to OA, as more toll-access journals accommodate OA mandates without converting, and even as more OA journals shift from gratis to libre, institutions will be able strengthen their OA policies without increasing publisher-controlled rejection rates or author-controlled waiver rates. They should watch the shifting balance of power and seize opportunities to strengthen their policies. The moments of opportunity will not be obvious. They will not be highlighted by objective evidence alone and will call for some self-fulfilling leadership. Institutional policy-makers will have to assess not only the climate created by existing policies, and existing levels of support, but also the likely effects of their own actions. Every strong, new policy increases the likelihood of publisher accommodation, and when enough universities and funders have policies, all publishers will have to accommodate them. In that sense, every strong new policy creates some of the conditions of its own success. Every institution adopting a new policy brings about OA for the research it controls and makes the way easier for other institutions behind it. Like many other policy issues, this is one on which it is easier to follow than to lead, and we already have a growing number of leaders. A critical mass is growing and every policy is an implicit invitation to other institutions to gain strength through common purpose and help accelerate publisher adaptation.

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Open Access: Economics Many publishers who oppose OA concede that OA is better for research and researchers than toll access. They merely object that we can’t pay for it. But we can pay for it. The first major study of the economic impact of OA policies was conducted by John Houghton and Peter Sheehan in 2006. Using conservative estimates that a nation’s gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) brings social returns of 50 percent, and that OA increases access and efficiency by 5 percent, Houghton and Sheehan calculated that a transition to OA would not only pay for itself, but add $1.7 billion/year to the UK economy and $16 billion/year to the U.S. economy. A later study focusing on Australia used the more conservative estimate that GERD brings social returns of only 25 percent, but still found that the bottom-line economic benefits of OA for publicly funded research were 51 times greater than the costs. Independent confirmation of Houghton’s results came in a major study released in April 2011, commissioned by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee, Publishing Research Consortium, Research Information Network, Research Libraries UK, and the Wellcome Trust. After studying five scenarios for improving research access, it concluded that green and gold OA “offer the greatest potential to policy-makers in promoting access. Both have positive, and potentially high, BCRs [benefit-cost ratios]. . . .” The same study noted that “the infrastructure for Green [OA] has largely already been built” and therefore that “increasing access by this route is especially cost-effective. . . .” I can add that repositories scale up more easily than journals to capture unmet demand, and that depositing in a repository costs the depositor nothing. For all these reasons, I’ll focus in this chapter on how to pay for gold OA (journals), not how to pay for green OA (repositories). Before turning to gold OA, however, I should note that there are widely varying estimates in the literature on what it costs a university to run an institutional repository. The divergence reflects the fact that repositories can serve many different purposes, and that some repositories serve more of them than others. If the minimum purpose is to host OA copies of faculty articles, and if faculty deposit their own articles, then the cost is minimal. But a repository is a general-purpose tool, and once launched there are good reasons for it to take on other responsibilities, such as long-term preservation, assisting faculty with digitization, permissions, and deposits, and hosting many other sorts of content, such as theses and dissertations, books or book chapters, conference proceedings, courseware, campus publications, digitized special collections, and administrative records. If the average repository is a significant expense today, the reason is that the average repository is doing significantly more than the minimum. OA journals pay their bills the way broadcast television and radio stations do—not through advertising or pledge drives, but through a simple generalization on advertising and pledge drives. Those with an interest in disseminating the content pay the production costs upfront so that access can be free of charge for everyone with the right equipment. Elsewhere I’ve called this the “some pay for all” model. Some OA journals have a subsidy from a university, library, foundation, society, museum, or government agency. Other OA journals charge a publication fee on accepted articles, to be paid by the author or the author’s sponsor (employer or funder). The party paying the subsidy or fee covers the journal’s expenses and readers pay nothing. OA journals that charge publication fees tend to waive them in cases of economic hardship, and journals with institutional subsidies tend not to charge publication fees. OA journals can diversify their funding and get by on lower subsidies, or lower fees, if they also have revenue from print editions, advertising, priced add-ons, or auxiliary services. Some institutions and consortia arrange fee discounts, or purchase annual memberships that include fee waivers or discounts for all affiliated researchers. Models that work well in some fields and nations may not work as well in others. No one claims that one size fits all. There’s still room for creativity in finding ways to pay the costs of a peer-reviewed OA journal, and many smart and motivated people are exploring different possibilities. Journals announce new variations almost every week, and we’re far from exhausting our cleverness and imagination. Green OA may suffer from invisibility, but gold OA does not. On the contrary, researchers who don’t know about OA repositories still understand that there are OA journals. Sometimes the visibility gap is so large that researchers, journalists, and policy-makers conclude that all OA is gold OA (see section 3.1 on green and gold OA). As a result, most researchers who think about the benefits of OA think about the benefits of gold OA. Here, at least, the news is good. The most comprehensive survey to date shows that an overwhelming 89 percent of researchers from all fields believe that OA journals are beneficial to their fields. Apart from the myth that all OA is gold OA, the most common myth about gold OA is that all OA journals charge “author fees” or use an “author-pays” business model. There are three mistakes here. The first is to assume that there is only one business model for OA journals, when there are many. The second is to assume that charging an upfront fee means authors are the ones expected to pay it. The third is to assume that all or even most OA journals charge upfront fees. In fact, most OA journals (70 percent) charge no upfront or author-side fees at all. By contrast, most toll-access journals (75 percent) do charge author-side fees. Moreover, even within the minority of fee-based OA journals, only 12 percent of those authors end up paying the fees out of pocket. Almost 90 percent of the time, the fees at fee-based journals are waived or paid by sponsors on behalf of authors. Terminology The terms “author fees” and “author pays” are specious and damaging. They’re false for the majority of OA journals, which charge no fees. They’re also misleading even for fee-based OA journals, where nearly nine times out of ten the fees are not paid by authors themselves. It’s more accurate to speak of “publication fees,” “processing fees,” or “author-side fees.” The first two don’t specify the payor, and the third merely specifies that the payment comes from the author side of the transaction, rather than the reader side, without implying that it must come from authors themselves. The false beliefs that most OA journals charge author-side fees and that most toll-access journals don’t have caused several kinds of harm. They scare authors away from OA journals. They support the misconception that gold OA excludes indigent authors. When we add in the background myth that all OA is gold OA, this misconception suggests that OA as such—and not just gold OA—excludes indigent authors. These false beliefs also support the insinuation that OA journals are more likely than non-OA journals to compromise on peer review. But if charging author-side fees for accepted papers really creates an incentive to lower standards, in order to rake in more fees, then most toll-access journals are guilty and most OA journals are not. In fact, however, when OA journals do charge author-side fees, they create firewalls between their financial and editorial operations. For example, most fee-based OA journals will waive their fees in cases of economic hardship, and take pains to prevent editors and referees engaged in peer review from knowing whether or not an author has requested a fee waiver. By contrast, at toll-access journals levying author-side page or color charges, editors generally know that accepted papers will entail revenue. The false belief that most OA journals charge author-side fees also infects studies in which authors misinform survey subjects before surveying them. In effect: “At OA journals, authors pay to be published; now let me ask you a series of questions about your attitude toward OA journals.” Finally, this false belief undermines calculations about who would bear the financial brunt if we made a general transition from toll-access journals to OA journals. A handful of studies have calculated that after a general conversion of peer-reviewed journals to OA, high-output universities would pay more in author-side fees than they pay now in subscriptions. These calculations make at least two assumptions unjustified by present facts or trends: that all OA journals would charge fees, and that all fees would be paid by universities. There are two kinds of OA journals, full and hybrid. Full OA journals provide OA to all their research articles. Hybrid OA journals provide OA to some and toll-access to others, when the choice is the author’s rather than the editor’s. Most hybrid OA journals charge a publication fee for the OA option. Authors who can find the money get immediate OA, and those who can’t or prefer not to, get toll access. (Many hybrid OA journals provide OA to all their articles after some time period, such as a year.) Some hybrid OA journals promise to reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake of the OA option, that is, to charge subscribers only for the toll-access articles. But most hybrid journal publishers don’t make this promise and “double dip” by charging subscription fees and publication fees for the same OA articles. Hybrid OA is very low-risk for publishers. If the OA option has low uptake, the publisher loses nothing and still has subscription revenue. If it has high uptake, the publisher has subscription revenue for the conventional articles, publication fees for the OA articles, and sometimes both at once for the OA articles. Hence, the model has spread far and fast. The Professional/Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers reported in 2011 that 74 percent of surveyed journals offering some form of OA in 2009 offered hybrid OA. At the same time, SHERPA listed more than 90 publishers offering hybrid OA options, including all of the largest publishers. Despite its spread, hybrid OA journals do little or nothing to help researchers, libraries, or publishers. The average rate of uptake for the OA option at hybrid journals is just 2 percent. The chief virtue of hybrid OA journals is that they give publishers some firsthand experience with the economics and logistics of OA publishing. But the economics are artificial, since hybrid OA publishers have no incentive to increase author uptake and make the model succeed. The publishers always have subscriptions to fall back on. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of full-OA journals charge no publication fees and the overwhelming majority of hybrid-OA journals never gain firsthand experience with no-fee business models. A growing number of for-profit OA publishers are making profits, and a growing number of nonprofit OA publishers are breaking even or making surpluses. Two different business models drive these sustainable publishing programs. BioMed Central makes profits and the Public Library of Science makes surpluses by charging publication fees. MedKnow makes profits without charging publication fees by selling priced print editions of its OA journals. Fee-based OA journals tend to work best in fields where most research is funded, and no-fee journals tend to work best in fields and countries where comparatively little research is funded. The successes of these two business models give hope that gold OA can be sustainable in every discipline. Every kind of peer-reviewed journal can become more sustainable by reducing costs. Although peer review is generally performed by unpaid volunteers, organizing or facilitating peer review is an expense. The journal must select referees, distribute files to referees, monitor who has what, track progress, nag dawdlers, collect comments and share them with the right people, facilitate communication, distinguish versions, and collect data on acceptances and rejections. One powerful way to reduce costs without reducing quality is to use free and open-source journal management software to automate the clerical tasks on this list. The leader in this field is Open Journal Systems from the Public Knowledge Project, but there are more than a dozen other open-source packages. While OJS or other open-source software could benefit even toll-access journals, their use is concentrated among OA journals. OJS alone is has more than 9,000 installations (though not all are used for managing journals). This is not merely an example of how one openness movement can help another but also of how fearing openness can lead conventional publishers to forgo financial benefits and leave money on the table. There are reasons to think that OA journals cost less to produce than toll-access journals of the same quality. OA journals dispense with subscription management (soliciting, negotiating, tracking, renewing subscribers), dispense with digital rights management (authenticating users, distinguishing authorized from unauthorized, blocking access to unauthorized), eliminate legal fees for licensing (drafting, negotiating, monitoring, and enforcing restrictive licenses), and reduce or eliminate marketing. In their place they add back little more than the cost of collecting publication fees or institutional subsidies. Several studies and OA publishers have testified to these lower costs. We shouldn’t count the savings from dropping print, since most toll-access journals in the sciences have already dropped their print editions and those in the humanities are moving in the same direction. We should be suspicious when large, venerable, conventional publishers say that in their experience the economics of OA publishing don’t work. Print-era publishers retooling for digital, and toll-access publishers retooling for OA, will inevitably realize smaller savings from OA than lean, mean OA start-ups without legacy equipment, personnel, or overhead from the age of print and subscriptions. About one-quarter of all peer-reviewed journals today are OA. Like toll-access journals, some are in the black and thriving and some are in the red and struggling. However, the full range of OA journals begins to look like a success story when we consider that the vast majority of the money needed to support peer-reviewed journals is currently tied up in subscriptions to conventional journals. OA journals have reached their current numbers and quality despite the extraordinary squeeze on budgets devoted to the support of peer-reviewed journals. Even if OA journals had the same production costs as toll-access journals, there’s enough money in the system to pay for peer-reviewed OA journals in every niche where we currently have peer-reviewed toll-access journals, and at the same level of quality. In fact, there’s more than enough, since we wouldn’t have to pay publisher profit margins surpassing those at ExxonMobil. Jan Velterop, the former publisher of BioMed Central, once said that OA publishing can be profitable but will “bring profit margins more in line with the added value.” To support a full range of high-quality OA journals, we don’t need new money. We only need to redirect money we’re currently spending on peer-reviewed journals. There are many kinds of redirection. One is the voluntary conversion of toll-access journals to OA. Conversion could be a journal’s grudging response to declining library budgets for toll-access journals and exclusion from the big deals that take the lion’s share of library budgets. It could be a grudging response to its own past price increases and rising levels of green OA (see chapter 8 on casualties). Or it could be a hopeful and enthusiastic desire to achieve the benefits of OA for authors (greater audience and impact), readers (freedom from price and permission barriers), and publishers themselves (increased readership, citations, submissions, and quality). Another kind of redirection is the rise of OA journal funds at universities. Even during times of declining budgets, libraries are setting aside money to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals. The funds help faculty choose OA journals for their new work and help build a sustainable alternative to toll-access journals. Redirection is also taking place on a large scale, primarily through CERN’s SCOAP3 project (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics). SCOAP3 is an ambitious plan to convert all the major toll-access journals in particle physics to OA, redirect the money formerly spent on reader-side subscription fees to author-side publication fees, and reduce the overall price to the journal-supporting institutions. It’s a peaceful revolution based on negotiation, consent, and self-interest. After four years of patiently building up budget pledges from libraries around the world, SCOAP3 entered its implementation phase in in April 2011. If SCOAP3 succeeds, it won’t merely prove that CERN can pull off ambitious projects, which we already knew. It will prove that this particular ambitious project has an underlying win-win logic convincing to stakeholders. Some of the factors explaining the success of SCOAP3 to date are physics-specific, such as the small number of targeted journals, the green OA culture in physics embraced even by toll-access publishers, and the dominance of CERN. Other factors are not physics-specific, such as the evident benefits for research institutions, libraries, funders, and publishers. A success in particle physics would give hope that the model could be lifted and adapted to other fields without their own CERN-like institutions to pave the way. Other fields would not need CERN-like money or dominance so much as CERN-like convening power to bring the stakeholders to the table. Then the win-win logic would have a chance to take over from there. Mark Rowse, former CEO of Ingenta, sketched another strategy for large-scale redirection in December 2003. A publisher could “flip” its toll-access journals to OA at one stroke by reinterpreting the payments it receives from university libraries as publication fees for a group of authors rather than subscription fees for a group of readers. One advantage over SCOAP3 is that the Rowsean flip can be tried one journal or one publisher at a time, and doesn’t require discipline-wide coordination. It could also scale up to the largest publishers or the largest coalitions of publishers. We have to be imaginative but we don’t have to improvise. There are some principles we can try to follow. Money freed up by the cancellation or conversion of peer-reviewed TA journals should be spent first on peer-reviewed OA journals, to ensure the continuation of peer review. Large-scale redirection is more efficient than small-scale redirection. Peaceful revolution through negotiation and self-interest is more amicable and potentially more productive than adaptation forced by falling asteroids. For the record, I advocate redirecting money freed up by cancellations or conversions, not canceling journals in order to free up money (except with SCOAP3 or Rowse-like consent and negotiation). This may look like hair-splitting, but the difference is neither small nor subtle. It’s roughly the difference between having great expectations and planning to kill your parents.

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New work order In March 2015, it was time for Hayden Wood and Amit Gudka to move out of the kitchen. The pair had raised investment for their startup, Bulb, a renewable energy supplier, and they were looking for an office. A coworking space was the obvious choice: somewhere that would allow them to take on more desks as needed. (When I meet them a little over a year later, they were eight strong and hiring around one more each month.) "We looked at a few different spaces," says Wood, who had previously spent 10 years in management consultancy for Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte) and Bain & Company. "Second Home had been open a few months and we took the tour. We were nervous: were we going to get in?" It is odd, perhaps, to think of the renting of office space as a socially testing business, entailing pre-interview nerves. But acceptance into Second Home, for some, signifies hipness. Juliette Morgan, partner at Cushman & Wakefield, a property consultancy, who works out of Second Home, says: "I used to joke that there was a cool alarm that went off when people came to look round – but then they let us in." Morgan's case may have been helped by her previous role as head of property for Tech City, the government initiative promoted by David Cameron's advisor Rohan Silva, who also happens to be the co-founder of Second Home. Wood admits that he and Gudka, who previously traded energy at Barclays for eight years, did know some people at Second Home already. "When we looked on the website, some of the faces were familiar. And we hoped our business idea was quite good." When I arrive at the Second Home reception desk, a sign urges me to "join us tonight at 3.30pm for meditation." Before that, there's the option to have lunch at the atrium restaurant, Jago, founded by a former head chef of Ottolenghi and the former general manager of Morito. Today, there are cauliflower fritters made with lentil flour (gluten-free), which you can eat while admiring the exuberant architecture of Spanish firm SelgasCano, which has transformed the former carpet warehouse near Brick Lane: a plexiglass bubble punched out of the front of the building, sweeping curved walls, a wide cantilevered staircase up to the pod-like offices on the first floor. The benches are orange, the floors yellow. ("There is quite a lot of science behind the colours, to do with improving mood and productivity," says Morgan.) Flowers flop in elegant vases and masses of plants sit in pots on sills, desks and walls. A row of fruit trees is in blossom outside. The exposed concrete pillars look unfinished, with scribble and tags still visible. Sam Aldenton, Silva's co-founder, has sourced 600 mid-century modern chairs from all over Europe. "It's an aesthetic that tells an investor you're being frugal with their money," says Morgan, "but it's also playful and energetic and that works for your brand. For us, it tells the tech companies we want to work with that we understand them. Coworking spaces say something about you, that you're a Second Home business or a Central Working business." Being a Second Home business gives you access to others that have also made the grade. "We had a strong business plan, but there were other things we didn't have,"says Wood. "Someone at Second Home recommended our branding agency, Ragged Edge. Congregation Partners, who are here, have helped with recruiting; and we met Blue State Digital [a digital strategy agency that worked on Obama's election campaign, whose London office is based at Second Home] in the bar one Friday night and they offered us a workshop about how to market and launch. It's an extremely generous collaborative culture." Other kinds of business at Second Home include venture capitalists; the European headquarters of chore-outsourcing company TaskRabbit; and ASAP54, an app that scans online fashion and locates where to buy it. Silva and Aldenton curate events that help them to network and that offer a kind of intellectual support and ballast – so Amit Gudka, a fan of the South African theoretical physicist Neil Turok was able to hear him speak at Second Home and afterwards have dinner with him and Silva. Wood and Gudka's first post-kitchen office was in Second Home's roaming area, where freelancers come and go. A desk costs £350 a month; they are sold several times over (a four-to-one ratio is thought to ensure the right level of occupancy without straining supply). The pair subsequently moved into a studio, then a larger office; they will take a bigger space upstairs when the refurbishment of three upper floors is completed. "It doesn't feel like being a tenant," says Wood. "The community team here has taught us a lot about how to interact with our own members." We are all members now, it seems. Business ventures are turning themselves into clubs, making what used to be banal choices about office space or energy supply statements of identity. There was no shortage of office options for Wood and Gudka, and all of them carried connotations about what kind of business they meant to be: incubators and accelerators run by different sorts of organisations; hacker spaces; industry- and sector-coworking spaces; more traditional office rentals from companies like Regus and Workspace; and all manner of coworking spaces, from scruffy coops to coworking empires. Coworking began because startups and freelancers, typically in tech and the creative industries, needed somewhere to work. But as more organisations outsource more of their operations – or as large corporates seek to reach those startups – the range of activities represented among coworkers has expanded to comprehend almost everything. KPMG’s tech startup advice arm is based at Interchange in Camden. Merck, Microsoft, American Express and GE all lease desks at WeWork, in addition to running their own offices. The annual Global Coworking Survey, produced by Deskmag, anticipates that 10,000 new coworking spaces will open worldwide in 2016. In Europe, the estimated number of spaces (though it's hard to keep track) has risen from 3,400 in 2013 to around 7,800 in 2016. According to Cushman & Wakefield's Juliette Morgan, "Twelve per cent of the uptake in the London market in the last year has been spaces like this. Everyone thinks it's going to continue." At a purely economic level, it's easy to see why. As large corporates downsize their core operations, they no longer need vast offices. Iris Lapinski watched the process in action when her educational non-profit startup, Apps for Good, squatted in Royal Bank of Scotland’s offices in the City in late 2008. "RBS was going through huge waves of redundancies. On our floor, it was three of us and 150 empty desks," she says, "and then new people would come in and they'd get fired too. Eventually they'd fired so many people they closed down the building." Aware that "tech companies were doing something funkier", she moved Apps for Good into the Trampery, the first coworking space in Shoreditch. Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey founded WeWork in 2010 in New York to capitalise on this corporate downsizing phenomenon: leasing large spaces, often previous corporate offices, subdividing them, then selling them at a profit. WeWork typically rents its buildings (although it owns its latest London site in Paddington) then subleases the space – with, according to Fast Company, average gross margins of 60 per cent. The model has proved so successful that WeWork now has 103 locations in 29 cities worldwide. The company will open five new coworking spaces in London this year, bringing the total to 11, with Paddington large enough for 2,100 'members'. The company recently authorised the sale of up to $780m in new stock, giving it a $16bn valuation and making it, on paper, the sixth most valuable private startup in the world. The Freelancers' Union in the US claims that 30 per cent of the US working population is now freelance, and predicts a rise to 50 per cent by 2035. One in eight London workers are self-employed. But the unstoppable rise and rise of coworking isn't simply about corporate downsizing and the growth of the startup and the gig economy, significant though these are. What distinguishes contemporary coworking spaces is the nature of their cultural claims. A study by Harvard Business Review found that coworkers believe their work has more meaning. The authors suggested that working alongside people doing different things reinforces workers' identity and distinctiveness; that coworkers feel they have more control over their lives (many spaces are open 24/7); that they have a stronger sense of community; and that there is still a social mission inherent in the idea of coworking, as outlined in the Coworking manifesto, and reinforced by the annual Global Coworking UnConference or GCUC (pronounced 'juicy'). WeWork's website urges you to "Create your life's work". "Do what you love" is one of WeWork's slogans, emblazoned on the front of a notebook they give me when I visit. Another is "Thank God it's Monday". Neumann describes his generation (he is 36) as the 'we generation' which, he explains, "cares about the world, actually wants to do cool things, and loves working." The coworking space – even on a vast, industrial scale as at WeWork – is a club. And the whole point of clubs is that you want to belong to them. To someone raised in the era of the corporate office, used to the subversive feeling of being behind enemy lines, this may seem an odd way to think about the workplace. To anyone for whom The Office of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant was painfully recognisable, with its grey partitions and random people thrown together to do pretty pointless things and get on each other's nerves, it might seem risible. But clearly lots of people want this. A paradoxical effect of the internet has been to make us desire more social connection in the real world. From coffee shops to festivals to gyms, examples are everywhere of people keen to come together and share experiences. As we have to rely more on ourselves and on our own resources at work, it's probably not surprising that we seek out the reassuring sight of other people doing the same. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri say in their 2012 book, Declaration, "The centre of gravity of capitalist production no longer resides in the factory but has drifted outside its walls. Society has become a factory." Work has blurred into life, in part owing to the peculiar nature of our current relationship to technology. We do not conceive of machines, as we did in the past, as engines of oppression, exploiting workers; rather, we frame our devices as intimate and personal, interactive and fun, blurring the distinctions between work and play. We tend not, for example, to view posting on Facebook as labour, even though there are perfectly good economic arguments why we should. The eight hours' work, eight hours' leisure, eight hours' rest fought for so fiercely in the 19th century has become meaningless in an era when we willingly, eagerly, spend 12 hours a day on a laptop. As work becomes increasingly unpredictable and permeable, in a way that reflects the internet itself, workspaces are imagined more as social landscapes. Increasingly, they are designed for serendipitous encounters, emotional expression, explorations of identity. Of course, you could take the cynical view that the imperative of productivity has now colonised every aspect of our lives, that our private relationships have become 'social capital', that even our intimate interactions have been turned into a kind of labour. Or you could say, as coworking enthusiasts tend to, that work has got a whole lot more fun. Whatever, this shift in our sense of work helps to explain why workplaces have increasingly come to resemble clubs, and why no one is falling about laughing at the idea of Silva and Aldenton calling their workspace Second Home. The workspace has become an expression of identity – which raises two questions: first, if coworking is all about finding a space to express your individualism, follow your passions, explore your creativity, why do the spaces all look so alike? And second, if the workplace is all about belonging to a club and clubs are by their nature exclusive, how scalable is that? There are new buildings rising all around WeWork Moorgate, in the City of London; an insistent noise of drilling, a clang of girders, a rumble of concrete mixers. This is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Crossrail's engineers are tunnelling beneath; giant new buildings advertise themselves on construction hoardings everywhere at street level: there is a provisional air, as though the city can't quite catch up with its own wealth. WeWork Moorgate is the second largest coworking space in the UK after WeWork Paddington, accommodating 3,000 people over eight floors. A permanent desk will cost you £425 a month, rising to £675 depending on its location in the building. A one-person office will set you back £725 to £825 a month, a four-person £2,600 to £3,100. The largest office here is for 40 people; in Paddington, one company has 230 desks. The interior ticks all the coworking style boxes: raw concrete; exposed ceilings revealing air conditioning ducts, pipes and silvered insulation; multicoloured upholstery; a kitchen with its own island bar offering free tea, coffee and craft beer; easy chairs and sofas; tables of varying heights and sizes; music; and some signifiers of fun, such as a table tennis table (but, unlike at WeWork's South Bank site, no arcade machines; nor, unlike at its Devonshire Square, any skateboards on the walls). In the toilet, cups for mouthwash urge you to 'stay fresh', which I am sure is meant jocularly but which arouses in me the same sort of mulish resentment I used to feel when I worked in advertising in my twenties and slogans in reception ordered me to "reach for the stars". (What makes you think I wouldn't, mate?). Given that coworking, which after all grew out of hacker culture, is supposed to embody an attitude of resistance to conventional authority, WeWork is curiously corporate, certainly in its approach to communication. I am asked not to quote the community manager who shows me around. There isn't anyone who can speak on the record (or off it, for that matter) in the building. My queries have to be submitted in writing then edited down because there are too many of them. The answers come back, finally, appended: "All attributable to Eugen Miropolski, Managing Director, Europe". Eugen Miropolski, Managing Director, Europe, says that WeWork is "much more than an office space provider. Members are given the space, community and services they need to create their life's work". Going around the building, what you mainly notice is that the spaces allotted to people's life's work are rather tiny and cramped. Effectively off corridors, they seem rather conventional behind their glass partitions: a desk, a chair, a lamp, a drawer. Many coworkers sit with their backs to their colleagues, staring at blank walls, with barely enough space for a third person to pass between them. You need a keycard to get anywhere inside the building. WeWork's enthusiasts, though, emphasise the connections they make with others, either physically or through an app that links members to 50,000 others worldwide. Miropolski claims "more than 70 per cent of our members collaborate with each other". This empire of office space has been derided as 'McCoworking'; but another way of looking at it might simply be that it's a sign of natural segmentation as the market matures. Many workspace providers set up because they wanted some office space themselves; they have no desire to be other than local, small-scale and collaborative. But others are starting to take on a role as akind of corporate parent. Canada's Coworking Ontario provides health insurance. WeWork is also reported to be looking at providing discounts on healthcare, payroll and shipping, replicating services that a corporate employer might once have provided. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, coffee shop-workspace hybrid Timberyard is dematerialising the desk, providing mobile workers who need to sit down and check their emails with the most ad hoc of workspaces. Most of Timberyard's users don't pay for space, the usual coworking business model, but they do pay for the tea and coffee ("award-winning", co-founder Darren Elliott is keen to point out) and for the artisan-produced, wellness-focused food (super seeds with almond butter on toast, beetroot, avocado and hummus on toast, hibiscus cake). Unlike most coffee shops, Timberyard's branches in Seven Dials and Soho are designed to encourage customers to stay and work: there is fast Wi-Fi with plentiful power sockets, careful regulation of temperature, lots of natural light and attentive design. Many of the chairs have been rescued from skips and reupholstered; the tables are striped like Jim Lambie staircases; the disabled toilet looks like a shipping container. In the last couple of months, Timberyard has renting out permanent desks in the basement of its Soho branch and now hosts three companies, one of eight people, one of 12 and one of 20. But Elliott says the shop upstairs will always be open to the street and the public. Typically, workers stay for a couple of hours, but they might be there for 20 minutes or all day. "We believe this is the way people will work in the future," Elliott says, surveying a sea of laptops: "portable, connected, independent and collaborative, sharing resources and seeking out inspiring spaces." Timberyard intends to become a way station for the digital nomad. The logical extension of the elision of work and home life is that the same organisations might end up providing both. WeWork is experimenting with micro apartments in two locations: in New York and at Crystal City, outside Washington DC. Second Home is also believed to have Roam, which began in Bali, intends to build a global co-living network, with its offer: "Sign one lease. Live around the world." From its initial base in Ubud, it has expanded into Miami and recently Madrid; Buenos Aires and London are 'coming soon'. Roam isn't simply about a bed for the night: it sells itself partly on the quality of its coworking offer. In Bali, the office space is on the roof, under a palm thatch, with a swimming pool in the courtyard below. Coworking organisations increasingly see a market in digital nomads: if you can work from a coffee shop in Seven Dials, why not a rooftop in Bali? It's not even necessary to have a string of spaces across the world to attract drop-ins from elsewhere:Coworking Visa andCoPass offer 'passports' that guarantee a certain amount of time in any of their participating spaces. The Trampery, the pioneering coworking organisation in London that attracted Iris Lapinski, is now moving into co-living. Founded by the sociologist-entrepreneur-musician-traveller-dandy Charles Armstrong, The Trampery currently has three spaces, at Old Street, near City Hall, and in Hackney Wick. Armstrong began with a cross-sector workspace but now specialises in fashion and retail at Old St, travel and tourism at London Bridge, and digital artists, fashion and design in Hackney, finding this a better way to create 'intentional communities' and secure corporate partnerships. In what Armstrong calls "a somewhat unconventional deal with Peabody", the Trampery is about to start building Fish Island Village in Hackney Wick: a co-living space that will also include traditional social housing. This experiment is partly a response to the pricing out of London of artists and other creatives and partly an attempt "to move beyond a single workspace to think about a neighbourhood". When Fish Island Village is built, the Trampery will curate its inhabitants based on what Armstrong describes as a mix of "means testing and merit testing". Rather than the usual micro-apartment model, "cellular units with a cavernous social area", Fish Island Village will have communal spaces for up to six bedrooms, "more like a large family. There will still be a members' club, shared by everyone." The development won't be aimed solely at affluent 18- to 30-year-olds, but will include flats of up to four bedrooms, suitable for people with children. "We don't want to create a single-generational demographic bubble." The single generation demographic bubble is of course the trouble with all this curation. Even while lip service is paid to ideas of innovation coming from unexpected places, from unlikely collisions and random connections, it is a very tough-minded curator who doesn't seek to be surrounded by people who are basically a bit like himself. With coworking spaces, as with the internet, there is the promise of connection and collaboration and a world of newness and surprise. And, as with the internet, there is a danger that you can easily end up talking either to people just like yourself. So what of those questions about style and scalability? As far as the former is concerned, coworking spaces do all look a little bit alike – but design has a long history of innovators and followers. Inevitably, everyone borrows the more directional visual cues, even to the point of pastiche. But they are not, in fact, all alike. They are surprising in their degree of difference. There are industrial-scale operators that lack the warmth and personal touches of the smaller providers (no one at WeWork is ever going to come out of the kitchen as you arrive, knowing your name and whom you're here to visit, which is what happens at the Trampery); but which also lack their preciousness about who is allowed to the party. And then there are the cool clubs that everyone in their right mind would want to join, but where few are chosen. It seems likely that coworking spaces will follow a pattern set by festivals. They will proliferate, each developing its own distinctive vibe, projecting an array of differing identities while all answering a need for the increasingly autonomous workers of the future to hang out with other people. Meanwhile, the current excitement over coworking may have less to do with a method of office organisation than with a handful of hugely successful connectors. When Iris Lapinski moved out of RBS, she chose the Trampery partly because "Charles draws in interesting people. He's got links to corporates, government, policymakers." One of these connections turned out to be Bob Schukai, head of advanced product innovation at Thomson Reuters, which led directly to £300,000 of sponsorship revenue for Apps for Good. "Charles is a great connector," Lapinsky says, "and that is really what makes the Trampery so special. Most don't have the same flair." Images from top: WeWork Moorgate; Second Home; WeWork; The Trampery Old Street, Home of Publicis Drugstore; Timberyard; WeWork This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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The end of the web In the past year, as we have witnessed the upending of the political order, the internet has been the theatre where many of the battles have been fought: from the hacking and leaking of Democratic party emails, to the proliferation of fake news and alternative facts, and yes, the outpourings of @realDonaldTrump. With domestic and geopolitical tensions rising, governments are finding it increasingly hard to function amid a constant barrage of uncontrollable information and potential cyber-attacks, making them grow more wary both of the internet's influence and their ability to control it. The fallout from this means we are facing the prospect of countries around the world pulling the plug on the open, global internet and creating their own independent networks. We might be about to see the end of the world wide internet as we know it. With globalisation under attack, the ultimate bastion of borderlessness – the global internet – might very well be one the biggest scalps taken by the newly emerging world order heralded in by Brexit and Trump. If a global orthodoxy of free trade, soft power and international organisations is overpowered by belligerent nations and isolationism, the net will inevitably be swept away with it. Yet although fragmentation – and ultimately also Balkanisation – will carry great social and economic cost, it could also be an opportunity. Europe, which has already been flexing its muscles when it comes to internet policy, now finds itself forced to rely less on US cooperation. It should therefore become a frontrunner in developing an alternative, decentralised internet, with its root values of fairness, openness and democracy restored. This could help the net – and indeed Europe – to become more resilient again. As much as we fear the 'splinternet', we should welcome the Euronet. Weaponisation of the internet Since we've become dependent on the internet for almost everything we do, dangers to the network's integrity threaten devastating effects. Governments may be tempted to turn inwards in an attempt to shield themselves and their citizens from cyber-attacks. Last October, unknown hackers used an array of badly secured 'internet of things' (IoT) devices to bring down most of the internet on the east coast of America in one of the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks to date. While depriving Americans of Amazon and Facebook for several hours was surely an inconvenience, the potential of the weaponised internet to do harm is infinitely greater. As more of the components of a country's critical infrastructure move online, the number of possible targets grows too. Hackers shut down a significant part of Ukraine's electricity grid in 2015, and crippled several important Estonian industries, including its banks, in 2007. Many cyber-security experts warn about the lacklustre defence of everything from air traffic control towers and voting machines to nuclear plants. One well-placed attack could do more damage than the most aggressive of traditional military campaigns, at a fraction of the cost. Because of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding cyber-capabilities – 'know your enemy' is a hard adage to follow if potential culprits and their capabilities are so tough to track – it has become impossible for governments to completely shield their countries from cyber-attacks. The growing urge to control the internet has also become apparent over the influence of so-called fake news. Distorting public opinion and fact as a manipulation technique is nothing new: it's been used since Roman times. But the relentless pace and scope with which the internet allows information to disseminate is quite unprecedented. Governments and the media (who have themselves often swapped truth for clicks) are having an increasingly hard time stemming the flow of biased or misleading news stories. So the democratic process suffers. The solutions offered by the reluctant tech giants providing a platform for fake news won't be sufficient to stop it altogether. This will prompt more countries to follow Russia and China in building their own platforms like VKontakte and Baidu, thus reducing foreign influence and allowing for extensive censorship and monitoring. The desire of developing countries to establish their own social networks will see them retreat into their own national bubbles. Fragile infrastructure While cyber attacks and false information campaigns use the internet to attack the infrastructure by which our societies function, the internet's own infrastructure is also at risk. Despite the internet's ephemeral, lawless appeal, its underlying network of cables, tubes and wires is very much rooted in the physical world. Over 99 per cent of all global internet communications are facilitated by an impressive web of undersea cables, connecting all corners of the world. A submarine deliberately destroying one of these cables in a hard-to-reach place could bring down access to parts of the internet for weeks; and so, by extension, all the systems that rely upon it. The fallibility of this shared infrastructure also makes it impossible to keep foreign or hostile actors out of domestic affairs. Though governments that heavily restrict internet access might find it easier to prevent information from flowing in and out of the country, they are still reliant on the same co-owned systems, with some parts inevitably falling under other countries' jurisdictions. This became very clear after the 2013 Snowden revelations, which showed that the US routinely tapped into foreign internet traffic routed through the country. The massive scale of this monitoring even led then president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff to call for the construction of an undersea cable from Brazil directly to Europe, bypassing the prying eyes of the National Security Agency altogether. And US intelligence agencies are by no means the only ones doing this kind of snooping, as we know all too well. With various nations eyeing each other suspiciously and traditional alliances crumbling, building alternative structures to make foreign interference more difficult seems a logical consequence. Who rules the internet? It won't just be the actual infrastructure and 'hard' elements of the internet where governments will seek more independence. Internet governance, the catch-all term to describe the processes and decisions that determine how the internet is managed, and how its technical norms and standards are set, is increasingly complex. In principle, no single actor should be in charge of the internet governance processes. Ideally, these should be overseen by a multi-stakeholder model where governments, the private sector and advocacy groups would have an equal voice and where anyone could be allowed to become involved. In practice, however, it is US government institutions and companies – yes, the usual suspects – that set the rules. They tend to be over-represented in meetings, and in charge of some of the largest regulatory bodies. American stewardship over the internet has long been an area of contention. Countries like China, Russia, and many (mainly developing) countries want more control over their own domestic networks, preferring to see the current model replaced by something more Westphalian, perhaps resembling the United Nations. This discussion will likely flair up again soon as the Trump administration seeks ways to reverse the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition: an arcane but highly controversial policy issue. IANA is the agency in charge of maintaining the global DNS (Domain Name System) as well as managing Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation and other important basic structural functions of the internet. The internet’s IANA functions had traditionally been managed by the non-profit ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), but remained under contract of the US Department of Commerce, which oversaw its processes – effectively leaving it under US government control. After almost 20 years of bickering and international kowtowing, IANA was brought under full ICANN control last October, finally becoming fully independent. This to the great dismay of many Republican lawmakers; particularly senator Ted Cruz, who has been fighting to stop the process for years. If the US government does decide to overturn the transition (and Trump has certainly shown enthusiasm for overturning decisions of the previous administration), it will do a lot of damage to the American-led governance process. How much credibility can it have when the most important partner doesn't even play by the rules? As these tensions increase, we'll likely see a push for more government bodies to take control of internet governance (such as the short-lived, Brazil-led NETMundial initiative), abandoning the more inclusive and cooperative approach involving businesses and civil society organisations. Then if the process fell even further apart, it would be a substantial challenge to the interoperable global internet, as regulations and standards swiftly went in different directions. The Big Four Though the internet was initially heralded as the greatest democratiser of information since Gutenberg, most data now flows through only a handful of companies. Silicon Valley tech giants, with the 'Big Four' of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon at the helm, rake in most of the spoils of the all-conquering global online economy. In their ambition to expand even further, these tech companies are themselves also an important cause of internet fragmentation, erecting 'walled gardens' all over the world. Facebook's controversial Free Basics service, which offers free data plans to users in developing countries, but which restricts access to a small number of Facebook-approved websites, is a prime example. Some call it digital colonialism. These moves aimed at generating even more revenue, concentrated in the hands of the few as inequality rises, understandably cause concern among governments and citizens alike. But our main worry should not be about economics. The Big Four – controlling our data, as well as our access to information – wield an inordinate amount of power. Indeed, Denmark recently announced it would appoint a igital ambassador specifically to deal with these technology giants, citing their influence as larger than that of many countries. Citizens worldwide have become so dependent on these platforms that there are effectively no readily available alternatives to move to if things turn sour. The sheer scale of the Women's March and similar demonstrations in recent weeks would not have been possible without the ability to organise online. What if these channels fall away, their freedom restricted by companies under the yoke of a hostile government? Though many American technology companies have already pledged they will not assist with the creation of a 'Muslim registry' – and have pushed back on Trump’s latest immigration restrictions – we have to be very aware that the amount of personal data they have on each of us would make it far too easy for them to do so. Foreign governments, which in the current political climate cannot rely on Google abiding by its mantra, 'Don't be evil', will aggressively start to pursue the construction of domestic alternatives. It is something we are already seeing happening worldwide. The splinternet Though the dream of the web internet pioneers was one of a completely open, non-hierarchical internet, over the years barriers have been springing up that restrict this freedom. Bit by bit, the internet is becoming more cordoned off. The idea of splitting up the internet into different, Balkanised internets – with a completely separate infrastructure – is not new. After the Snowden revelations, Germany took action and started looking into the construction of the 'Internetz', a German-only network (although one that allows for the possibility of expanding to the rest of the EU). We do not currently have an example of a real internet island in place, but the closest version we see is probably the Great Firewall of China. Though China hasn't built an entirely separate infrastructure, its internet looks entirely different from what we are used to, with content heavily censored and many platforms and websites completely banned. Russia appears to be following suit. Last November, Russia banned LinkedIn from operating in the country because the social network did not adhere to a new law decreeing that all data generated by Russian users should be stored within Russia itself. In recent weeks, news has also emerged that Moscow has been working with Beijing to implement something similar to the Great Firewall for its own domestic users. Democracies and autocracies alike have long come to understand the great power of the internet and have learned how to both harness and restrict it. Who will be the first to go it alone? It's difficult to say yet but the usual suspects are lining up: China; Russia; Europe; even Trump's America . Other countries like Brazil or Turkey might see a compelling reason to do so as well. Now that we are so used to a ubiquitous and global internet, it's hard to imagine what a world of fragmented, national internets might look like. What we do know is that the internet of fun and games, of unfettered access, is quickly coming to an end. When it does, it will be another big nail in the coffin for globalisation. Breaking free The idea of a Balkanised internet, of different national and supranational internet islands, is a dark one. What living in such a future would look like, no one knows. Inevitably, though, it would herald a world of less mutual understanding, less shared prosperity and shrinking horizons. However, the fragmentation of the internet need not be bad news. As the limitations of its original incarnation are becoming increasingly clear, starting from scratch provides us with an important opportunity to right our initial wrongs. We can build a network or networks that are more ethical, inclusive and resilient to outside threats. While this is a moment of disharmony and uncertainty for the European project, the EU has much it agrees upon when it comes to policy and regulating the internet's mostly American corporate giants: from its ambitious data protection policies and the right to be forgotten, to Apple tax case. But it could do more. The global internet as we know it today began as a public space where everyone had an equal opportunity to use it as we liked. But it has quickly privatised, locking us into platforms that 'harvest' our data. As European citizens grow increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the internet, the EU has a great opportunity. The EU should take a different approach to the internet and, rather than making it an unregulated free-for-all, consider it a 'commons': a public good open to all, excluding none. The EU could create and fund the infrastructure for this and help ensure safety for all. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals would do their bit by creating a variety of tools to add to this commons, which would become fully interoperable through shared standards and underpinning technologies. One necessary component of such an internet commons is that it should be decentralised. Decentralising the internet and rethinking its structure would allow users to take back control over the network of networks, letting them manage their own personal data rather than giving it away to large companies, as well as offering them more choice over the tools they use. It is also often said that distributed internets would also inherently be much safer: largescale cyber-attacks are easier to prevent if we reduce the number of central nodes that traffic can travel through. But a European internet would above all need to be radically ambitious – especially with the EU in a fractured state. The rules for the decentralised, new internet are still wide open, and we have the opportunity to set them. The emergence of a new world order is forcing Europe to rethink itself, come closer together and defend its values in the world. Creating a completely new internet built around these values – and open to any like-minded country to join – might be one extraordinarily effective way of achieving it. This is an extended version of a piece originally published in Nesta's 10 predictions for 2017 series Correction 20 February 2017: this article was updated to correct a few instances of 'web' to 'internet' This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. 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PRoblem by Alan E. Nourse The letter came down the slot too early that morning to be the regular mail run. Pete Greenwood eyed the New Philly photocancel with a dreadful premonition. The letter said: Peter: Can you come East chop-chop, urgent? Grdznth problem getting to be a PRoblem, need expert icebox salesman to get gators out of hair fast. Yes? Math boys hot on this, citizens not so hot. Please come. Tommy Pete tossed the letter down the gulper with a sigh. He had lost a bet to himself because it had come three days later than he expected, but it had come all the same, just as it always did when Tommy Heinz got himself into a hole. Not that he didn't like Tommy. Tommy was a good PR-man, as PR-men go. He just didn't know his own depth. PRoblem in a beady Grdznth eye! What Tommy needed right now was a Bazooka Battalion, not a PR-man. Pete settled back in the Eastbound Rocketjet with a sigh of resignation. He was just dozing off when the fat lady up the aisle let out a scream. A huge reptilian head had materialized out of nowhere and was hanging in air, peering about uncertainly. A scaly green body followed, four feet away, complete with long razor talons, heavy hind legs, and a whiplash tail with a needle at the end. For a moment the creature floated upside down, legs thrashing. Then the head and body joined, executed a horizontal pirouette, and settled gently to the floor like an eight-foot circus balloon. Two rows down a small boy let out a muffled howl and tried to bury himself in his mother's coat collar. An indignant wail arose from the fat lady. Someone behind Pete groaned aloud and quickly retired behind a newspaper. The creature coughed apologetically. "Terribly sorry," he said in a coarse rumble. "So difficult to control, you know. Terribly sorry...." His voice trailed off as he lumbered down the aisle toward the empty seat next to Pete. The fat lady gasped, and an angry murmur ran up and down the cabin. "Sit down," Pete said to the creature. "Relax. Cheerful reception these days, eh?" "You don't mind?" said the creature. "Not at all." Pete tossed his briefcase on the floor. At a distance the huge beast had looked like a nightmare combination of large alligator and small tyrannosaurus. Now, at close range Pete could see that the "scales" were actually tiny wrinkles of satiny green fur. He knew, of course, that the Grdznth were mammals—"docile, peace-loving mammals," Tommy's PR-blasts had declared emphatically—but with one of them sitting about a foot away Pete had to fight down a wave of horror and revulsion. The creature was most incredibly ugly. Great yellow pouches hung down below flat reptilian eyes, and a double row of long curved teeth glittered sharply. In spite of himself Pete gripped the seat as the Grdznth breathed at him wetly through damp nostrils. "Misgauged?" said Pete. The Grdznth nodded sadly. "It's horrible of me, but I just can't help it. I always misgauge. Last time it was the chancel of St. John's Cathedral. I nearly stampeded morning prayer—" He paused to catch his breath. "What an effort. The energy barrier, you know. Frightfully hard to make the jump." He broke off sharply, staring out the window. "Dear me! Are we going east ?" "I'm afraid so, friend." "Oh, dear. I wanted Florida ." "Well, you seem to have drifted through into the wrong airplane," said Pete. "Why Florida?" The Grdznth looked at him reproachfully. "The Wives, of course. The climate is so much better, and they mustn't be disturbed, you know." "Of course," said Pete. "In their condition. I'd forgotten." "And I'm told that things have been somewhat unpleasant in the East just now," said the Grdznth. Pete thought of Tommy, red-faced and frantic, beating off hordes of indignant citizens. "So I hear," he said. "How many more of you are coming through?" "Oh, not many, not many at all. Only the Wives—half a million or so—and their spouses, of course." The creature clicked his talons nervously. "We haven't much more time, you know. Only a few more weeks, a few months at the most. If we couldn't have stopped over here, I just don't know what we'd have done." "Think nothing of it," said Pete indulgently. "It's been great having you." The passengers within earshot stiffened, glaring at Pete. The fat lady was whispering indignantly to her seat companion. Junior had half emerged from his mother's collar; he was busy sticking out his tongue at the Grdznth. The creature shifted uneasily. "Really, I think—perhaps Florida would be better." "Going to try it again right now? Don't rush off," said Pete. "Oh, I don't mean to rush. It's been lovely, but—" Already the Grdznth was beginning to fade out. "Try four miles down and a thousand miles southeast," said Pete. The creature gave him a toothy smile, nodded once, and grew more indistinct. In another five seconds the seat was quite empty. Pete leaned back, grinning to himself as the angry rumble rose around him like a wave. He was a Public Relations man to the core—but right now he was off duty. He chuckled to himself, and the passengers avoided him like the plague all the way to New Philly. But as he walked down the gangway to hail a cab, he wasn't smiling so much. He was wondering just how high Tommy was hanging him, this time. The lobby of the Public Relations Bureau was swarming like an upturned anthill when Pete disembarked from the taxi. He could almost smell the desperate tension of the place. He fought his way past scurrying clerks and preoccupied poll-takers toward the executive elevators in the rear. On the newly finished seventeenth floor, he found Tommy Heinz pacing the corridor like an expectant young father. Tommy had lost weight since Pete had last seen him. His ruddy face was paler, his hair thin and ragged as though chunks had been torn out from time to time. He saw Pete step off the elevator, and ran forward with open arms. "I thought you'd never get here!" he groaned. "When you didn't call, I was afraid you'd let me down." "Me?" said Pete. "I'd never let down a pal." The sarcasm didn't dent Tommy. He led Pete through the ante-room into the plush director's office, bouncing about excitedly, his words tumbling out like a waterfall. He looked as though one gentle shove might send him yodeling down Market Street in his underdrawers. "Hold it," said Pete. "Relax, I'm not going to leave for a while yet. Your girl screamed something about a senator as we came in. Did you hear her?" Tommy gave a violent start. "Senator! Oh, dear." He flipped a desk switch. "What senator is that?" "Senator Stokes," the girl said wearily. "He had an appointment. He's ready to have you fired." "All I need now is a senator," Tommy said. "What does he want?" "Guess," said the girl. "Oh. That's what I was afraid of. Can you keep him there?" "Don't worry about that," said the girl. "He's growing roots. They swept around him last night, and dusted him off this morning. His appointment was for yesterday , remember?" "Remember! Of course I remember. Senator Stokes—something about a riot in Boston." He started to flip the switch, then added, "See if you can get Charlie down here with his giz." He turned back to Pete with a frantic light in his eye. "Good old Pete. Just in time. Just. Eleventh-hour reprieve. Have a drink, have a cigar—do you want my job? It's yours. Just speak up." "I fail to see," said Pete, "just why you had to drag me all the way from L.A. to have a cigar. I've got work to do." "Selling movies, right?" said Tommy. "Check." "To people who don't want to buy them, right?" "In a manner of speaking," said Pete testily. "Exactly," said Tommy. "Considering some of the movies you've been selling, you should be able to sell anything to anybody, any time, at any price." "Please. Movies are getting Better by the Day." "Yes, I know. And the Grdznth are getting worse by the hour. They're coming through in battalions—a thousand a day! The more Grdznth come through, the more they act as though they own the place. Not nasty or anything—it's that infernal politeness that people hate most, I think. Can't get them mad, can't get them into a fight, but they do anything they please, and go anywhere they please, and if the people don't like it, the Grdznth just go right ahead anyway." Pete pulled at his lip. "Any violence?" Tommy gave him a long look. "So far we've kept it out of the papers, but there have been some incidents. Didn't hurt the Grdznth a bit—they have personal protective force fields around them, a little point they didn't bother to tell us about. Anybody who tries anything fancy gets thrown like a bolt of lightning hit him. Rumors are getting wild—people saying they can't be killed, that they're just moving in to stay." Pete nodded slowly. "Are they?" "I wish I knew. I mean, for sure. The psych-docs say no. The Grdznth agreed to leave at a specified time, and something in their cultural background makes them stick strictly to their agreements. But that's just what the psych-docs think, and they've been known to be wrong." "And the appointed time?" Tommy spread his hands helplessly. "If we knew, you'd still be in L.A. Roughly six months and four days, plus or minus a month for the time differential. That's strictly tentative, according to the math boys. It's a parallel universe, one of several thousand already explored, according to the Grdznth scientists working with Charlie Karns. Most of the parallels are analogous, and we happen to be analogous to the Grdznth, a point we've omitted from our PR-blasts. They have an eight-planet system around a hot sun, and it's going to get lots hotter any day now." Pete's eyes widened. "Nova?" "Apparently. Nobody knows how they predicted it, but they did. Spotted it coming several years ago, so they've been romping through parallel after parallel trying to find one they can migrate to. They found one, sort of a desperation choice. It's cold and arid and full of impassable mountain chains. With an uphill fight they can make it support a fraction of their population." Tommy shook his head helplessly. "They picked a very sensible system for getting a good strong Grdznth population on the new parallel as fast as possible. The males were picked for brains, education, ability and adaptability; the females were chosen largely according to how pregnant they were." Pete grinned. "Grdznth in utero. There's something poetic about it." "Just one hitch," said Tommy. "The girls can't gestate in that climate, at least not until they've been there long enough to get their glands adjusted. Seems we have just the right climate here for gestating Grdznth, even better than at home. So they came begging for permission to stop here, on the way through, to rest and parturiate." "So Earth becomes a glorified incubator." Pete got to his feet thoughtfully. "This is all very touching," he said, "but it just doesn't wash. If the Grdznth are so unpopular with the masses, why did we let them in here in the first place?" He looked narrowly at Tommy. "To be very blunt, what's the parking fee?" "Plenty," said Tommy heavily. "That's the trouble, you see. The fee is so high, Earth just can't afford to lose it. Charlie Karns'll tell you why." Charlie Karns from Math Section was an intense skeleton of a man with a long jaw and a long white coat drooping over his shoulders like a shroud. In his arms he clutched a small black box. "It's the parallel universe business, of course," he said to Pete, with Tommy beaming over his shoulder. "The Grdznth can cross through. They've been able to do it for a long time. According to our figuring, this must involve complete control of mass, space and dimension, all three. And time comes into one of the three—we aren't sure which." The mathematician set the black box on the desk top and released the lid. Like a jack-in-the-box, two small white plastic spheres popped out and began chasing each other about in the air six inches above the box. Presently a third sphere rose up from the box and joined the fun. Pete watched it with his jaw sagging until his head began to spin. "No wires?" " Strictly no wires," said Charlie glumly. "No nothing." He closed the box with a click. "This is one of their children's toys, and theoretically, it can't work. Among other things, it takes null-gravity to operate." Pete sat down, rubbing his chin. "Yes," he said. "I'm beginning to see. They're teaching you this?" Tommy said, "They're trying to. He's been working for weeks with their top mathematicians, him and a dozen others. How many computers have you burned out, Charlie?" "Four. There's a differential factor, and we can't spot it. They have the equations, all right. It's a matter of translating them into constants that make sense. But we haven't cracked the differential." "And if you do, then what?" Charlie took a deep breath. "We'll have inter-dimensional control, a practical, utilizable transmatter. We'll have null-gravity, which means the greatest advance in power utilization since fire was discovered. It might give us the opening to a concept of time travel that makes some kind of sense. And power! If there's an energy differential of any magnitude—" He shook his head sadly. "We'll also know the time-differential," said Tommy hopefully, "and how long the Grdznth gestation period will be." "It's a fair exchange," said Charlie. "We keep them until the girls have their babies. They teach us the ABC's of space, mass and dimension." Pete nodded. "That is, if you can make the people put up with them for another six months or so." Tommy sighed. "In a word—yes. So far we've gotten nowhere at a thousand miles an hour." "I can't do it!" the cosmetician wailed, hurling himself down on a chair and burying his face in his hands. "I've failed. Failed!" The Grdznth sitting on the stool looked regretfully from the cosmetician to the Public Relations men. "I say—I am sorry...." His coarse voice trailed off as he peeled a long strip of cake makeup off his satiny green face. Pete Greenwood stared at the cosmetician sobbing in the chair. "What's eating him ?" "Professional pride," said Tommy. "He can take twenty years off the face of any woman in Hollywood. But he's not getting to first base with Gorgeous over there. This is only one thing we've tried," he added as they moved on down the corridor. "You should see the field reports. We've tried selling the advances Earth will have, the wealth, the power. No dice. The man on the street reads our PR-blasts, and then looks up to see one of the nasty things staring over his shoulder at the newspaper." "So you can't make them beautiful," said Pete. "Can't you make them cute?" "With those teeth? Those eyes? Ugh." "How about the 'jolly company' approach?" "Tried it. There's nothing jolly about them. They pop out of nowhere, anywhere. In church, in bedrooms, in rush-hour traffic through Lincoln Tunnel—look!" Pete peered out the window at the traffic jam below. Cars were snarled up for blocks on either side of the intersection. A squad of traffic cops were converging angrily on the center of the mess, where a stream of green reptilian figures seemed to be popping out of the street and lumbering through the jammed autos like General Sherman tanks. "Ulcers," said Tommy. "City traffic isn't enough of a mess as it is. And they don't do anything about it. They apologize profusely, but they keep coming through." The two started on for the office. "Things are getting to the breaking point. The people are wearing thin from sheer annoyance—to say nothing of the nightmares the kids are having, and the trouble with women fainting." The signal light on Tommy's desk was flashing scarlet. He dropped into a chair with a sigh and flipped a switch. "Okay, what is it now?" "Just another senator," said a furious male voice. "Mr. Heinz, my arthritis is beginning to win this fight. Are you going to see me now, or aren't you?" "Yes, yes, come right in!" Tommy turned white. "Senator Stokes," he muttered. "I'd completely forgotten—" The senator didn't seem to like being forgotten. He walked into the office, looked disdainfully at the PR-men, and sank to the edge of a chair, leaning on his umbrella. "You have just lost your job," he said to Tommy, with an icy edge to his voice. "You may not have heard about it yet, but you can take my word for it. I personally will be delighted to make the necessary arrangements, but I doubt if I'll need to. There are at least a hundred senators in Washington who are ready to press for your dismissal, Mr. Heinz—and there's been some off-the-record talk about a lynching. Nothing official, of course." "Senator—" "Senator be hanged! We want somebody in this office who can manage to do something." "Do something! You think I'm a magician? I can just make them vanish? What do you want me to do?" The senator raised his eyebrows. "You needn't shout, Mr. Heinz. I'm not the least interested in what you do. My interest is focused completely on a collection of five thousand letters, telegrams, and visiphone calls I've received in the past three days alone. My constituents, Mr. Heinz, are making themselves clear. If the Grdznth do not go, I go." "That would never do, of course," murmured Pete. The senator gave Pete a cold, clinical look. "Who is this person?" he asked Tommy. "An assistant on the job," Tommy said quickly. "A very excellent PR-man." The senator sniffed audibly. "Full of ideas, no doubt." "Brimming," said Pete. "Enough ideas to get your constituents off your neck for a while, at least." "Indeed." "Indeed," said Pete. "Tommy, how fast can you get a PR-blast to penetrate? How much medium do you control?" "Plenty," Tommy gulped. "And how fast can you sample response and analyze it?" "We can have prelims six hours after the PR-blast. Pete, if you have an idea, tell us!" Pete stood up, facing the senator. "Everything else has been tried, but it seems to me one important factor has been missed. One that will take your constituents by the ears." He looked at Tommy pityingly. "You've tried to make them lovable, but they aren't lovable. They aren't even passably attractive. There's one thing they are though, at least half of them." Tommy's jaw sagged. "Pregnant," he said. "Now see here," said the senator. "If you're trying to make a fool out of me to my face—" "Sit down and shut up," said Pete. "If there's one thing the man in the street reveres, my friend, it's motherhood. We've got several hundred thousand pregnant Grdznth just waiting for all the little Grdznth to arrive, and nobody's given them a side glance." He turned to Tommy. "Get some copywriters down here. Get a Grdznth obstetrician or two. We're going to put together a PR-blast that will twang the people's heart-strings like a billion harps." The color was back in Tommy's cheeks, and the senator was forgotten as a dozen intercom switches began snapping. "We'll need TV hookups, and plenty of newscast space," he said eagerly. "Maybe a few photographs—do you suppose maybe baby Grdznth are lovable?" "They probably look like salamanders," said Pete. "But tell the people anything you want. If we're going to get across the sanctity of Grdznth motherhood, my friend, anything goes." "It's genius," chortled Tommy. "Sheer genius." "If it sells," the senator added, dubiously. "It'll sell," Pete said. "The question is: for how long?" The planning revealed the mark of genius. Nothing sudden, harsh, or crude—but slowly, in a radio comment here or a newspaper story there, the emphasis began to shift from Grdznth in general to Grdznth as mothers. A Rutgers professor found his TV discussion on "Motherhood as an Experience" suddenly shifted from 6:30 Monday evening to 10:30 Saturday night. Copy rolled by the ream from Tommy's office, refined copy, hypersensitively edited copy, finding its way into the light of day through devious channels. Three days later a Grdznth miscarriage threatened, and was averted. It was only a page 4 item, but it was a beginning. Determined movements to expel the Grdznth faltered, trembled with indecision. The Grdznth were ugly, they frightened little children, they were a trifle overbearing in their insufferable stubborn politeness—but in a civilized world you just couldn't turn expectant mothers out in the rain. Not even expectant Grdznth mothers. By the second week the blast was going at full tilt. In the Public Relations Bureau building, machines worked on into the night. As questionnaires came back, spot candid films and street-corner interview tapes ran through the projectors on a twenty-four-hour schedule. Tommy Heinz grew thinner and thinner, while Pete nursed sharp post-prandial stomach pains. "Why don't people respond ?" Tommy asked plaintively on the morning the third week started. "Haven't they got any feelings? The blast is washing over them like a wave and there they sit!" He punched the private wire to Analysis for the fourth time that morning. He got a man with a hag-ridden look in his eye. "How soon?" "You want yesterday's rushes?" "What do you think I want? Any sign of a lag?" "Not a hint. Last night's panel drew like a magnet. The D-Date tag you suggested has them by the nose." "How about the President's talk?" The man from Analysis grinned. "He should be campaigning." Tommy mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. "Okay. Now listen: we need a special run on all response data we have for tolerance levels. Got that? How soon can we have it?" Analysis shook his head. "We could only make a guess with the data so far." "Fine," said Tommy. "Make a guess." "Give us three hours," said Analysis. "You've got thirty minutes. Get going." Turning back to Pete, Tommy rubbed his hands eagerly. "It's starting to sell, boy. I don't know how strong or how good, but it's starting to sell! With the tolerance levels to tell us how long we can expect this program to quiet things down, we can give Charlie a deadline to crack his differential factor, or it's the ax for Charlie." He chuckled to himself, and paced the room in an overflow of nervous energy. "I can see it now. Open shafts instead of elevators. A quick hop to Honolulu for an afternoon on the beach, and back in time for supper. A hundred miles to the gallon for the Sunday driver. When people begin seeing what the Grdznth are giving us, they'll welcome them with open arms." "Hmmm," said Pete. "Well, why won't they? The people just didn't trust us, that was all. What does the man in the street know about transmatters? Nothing. But give him one, and then try to take it away." "Sure, sure," said Pete. "It sounds great. Just a little bit too great." Tommy blinked at him. "Too great? Are you crazy?" "Not crazy. Just getting nervous." Pete jammed his hands into his pockets. "Do you realize where we're standing in this thing? We're out on a limb—way out. We're fighting for time—time for Charlie and his gang to crack the puzzle, time for the Grdznth girls to gestate. But what are we hearing from Charlie?" "Pete, Charlie can't just—" "That's right," said Pete. " Nothing is what we're hearing from Charlie. We've got no transmatter, no null-G, no power, nothing except a whole lot of Grdznth and more coming through just as fast as they can. I'm beginning to wonder what the Grdznth are giving us." "Well, they can't gestate forever." "Maybe not, but I still have a burning desire to talk to Charlie. Something tells me they're going to be gestating a little too long." They put through the call, but Charlie wasn't answering. "Sorry," the operator said. "Nobody's gotten through there for three days." "Three days?" cried Tommy. "What's wrong? Is he dead?" "Couldn't be. They burned out two more machines yesterday," said the operator. "Killed the switchboard for twenty minutes." "Get him on the wire," Tommy said. "That's orders." "Yes, sir. But first they want you in Analysis." Analysis was a shambles. Paper and tape piled knee-deep on the floor. The machines clattered wildly, coughing out reams of paper to be gulped up by other machines. In a corner office they found the Analysis man, pale but jubilant. "The Program," Tommy said. "How's it going?" "You can count on the people staying happy for at least another five months." Analysis hesitated an instant. "If they see some baby Grdznth at the end of it all." There was dead silence in the room. "Baby Grdznth," Tommy said finally. "That's what I said. That's what the people are buying. That's what they'd better get." Tommy swallowed hard. "And if it happens to be six months?" Analysis drew a finger across his throat. Tommy and Pete looked at each other, and Tommy's hands were shaking. "I think," he said, "we'd better find Charlie Karns right now." Math Section was like a tomb. The machines were silent. In the office at the end of the room they found an unshaven Charlie gulping a cup of coffee with a very smug-looking Grdznth. The coffee pot was floating gently about six feet above the desk. So were the Grdznth and Charlie. "Charlie!" Tommy howled. "We've been trying to get you for hours! The operator—" "I know, I know." Charlie waved a hand disjointedly. "I told her to go away. I told the rest of the crew to go away, too." "Then you cracked the differential?" Charlie tipped an imaginary hat toward the Grdznth. "Spike cracked it," he said. "Spike is a sort of Grdznth genius." He tossed the coffee cup over his shoulder and it ricochetted in graceful slow motion against the far wall. "Now why don't you go away, too?" Tommy turned purple. "We've got five months," he said hoarsely. "Do you hear me? If they aren't going to have their babies in five months, we're dead men." Charlie chuckled. "Five months, he says. We figured the babies to come in about three months—right, Spike? Not that it'll make much difference to us." Charlie sank slowly down to the desk. He wasn't laughing any more. "We're never going to see any Grdznth babies. It's going to be a little too cold for that. The energy factor," he mumbled. "Nobody thought of that except in passing. Should have, though, long ago. Two completely independent universes, obviously two energy systems. Incompatible. We were dealing with mass, space and dimension—but the energy differential was the important one." "What about the energy?" "We're loaded with it. Super-charged. Packed to the breaking point and way beyond." Charlie scribbled frantically on the desk pad. "Look, it took energy for them to come through—immense quantities of energy. Every one that came through upset the balance, distorted our whole energy pattern. And they knew from the start that the differential was all on their side—a million of them unbalances four billion of us. All they needed to overload us completely was time for enough crossings." "And we gave it to them." Pete sat down slowly, his face green. "Like a rubber ball with a dent in the side. Push in one side, the other side pops out. And we're the other side. When?" "Any day now. Maybe any minute." Charlie spread his hands helplessly. "Oh, it won't be bad at all. Spike here was telling me. Mean temperature in only 39 below zero, lots of good clean snow, thousands of nice jagged mountain peaks. A lovely place, really. Just a little too cold for Grdznth. They thought Earth was much nicer." "For them," whispered Tommy. "For them," Charlie said. Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from "Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse" and was first published in Galaxy October 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from the September 1960 issue of If. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Star Performer By ROBERT J. SHEA Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS Blue Boy's rating was high and his fans were loyal to the death—anyone's death! Gavir gingerly fitted the round opening in the bottom of the silvery globe over the top of his hairless blue skull. He pulled the globe down until he felt tiny filaments touching his scalp. The tips of the wires were cold. The moderator then said, " Dreaming Through the Universe tonight brings you the first native Martian to appear on the dreamwaves—Gavir of the Desert Men. With him is his guardian, Dr. Malcomb Rice, the noted anthropologist." Then the moderator questioned Malcomb, while Gavir nervously awaited the moment when his thoughts would be transmitted to millions of Earthmen. Malcomb told how he had been struck by Gavir's intelligence and missionary-taught ability to speak Earth's language, and had decided to bring Gavir to Earth. The moderator turned to Gavir. "Are you anxious to get back to Mars?" No! Gavir thought. Back behind the Preserve Barrier that killed you instantly if you stepped too close to it? Back to the constant fear of being seized by MDC guards for a labor pool, to wind up in the MDC mines? Mars was where Gavir's father had been pinned, bayonets through his hands and feet, to the wall of a shack just the other side of the Barrier, to die slowly, out of Gavir's reach. Father James told Gavir that the head of MDC himself had ordered the killing, because Gavir's father had tried to organize resistance to the Corporation. Mars was where the magic powers of the Earthmen and the helplessness of the Martian tribes would always protect the head of MDC from Gavir's vengeance. Back to that world of hopeless fear and hatred? I never want to go back to Mars! I want to stay here! But that wasn't what he was supposed to think. Quickly he said, "I will be happy to return to my people." A movement caught his eye. The producer, reclining on a divan in a far corner of the small studio, was making some kind of signal by beating his fist against his forehead. "Well, enough of that!" the moderator said briskly. "How about singing one of your tribal songs for us?" Gavir said, "I will sing the Song of Going to Hunt ." He heaved himself up from the divan, and, feet planted wide apart, threw back his head and began to howl. He was considered a poor singer in his tribe, and he was not surprised that Malcomb and the moderator winced. But Malcomb had told him that it wouldn't matter. The dreamees receiving the dreamcast would hear the song as it should sound, as Gavir heard it in his mind. Everything that Gavir saw and heard and felt in his mind, the dreamees could see and hear and feel.... I t was cold, bitter cold, on the plain. The hunter stood at the edge of the camp as the shriveled Martian sun struck the tops of the Shakam hills. The hunter hefted the long, balanced narvoon, the throwing knife, in his hand. He had faith in the knife, and in his skill with it. The hunter filled his lungs, the cold air reaching deep into his chest. He shouted out his throat-bursting hunting cry. He began to run across the plain. Crouching behind crumbling red rocks, racing over flat expanses of orange sand, the hunter sought traces of the seegee, the great slow desert beast whose body provided his tribe with all the essentials of existence. At last he saw tracks. He mounted a dune. Out on the plain before him a great brown seegee lumbered patiently, unaware of its danger. The hunter was about to strike out after it, when a dark form leaped at him. The hunter saw it out of the corner of his eye at the last moment. His startled sidestep saved him from the neck-breaking snap of the great jaws. The drock's long body was armored with black scales. Curving fangs protruded from its upper jaw. Its hand-like forepaws ended in hooked claws, to grasp and tear its prey. It was larger, stronger, faster than the hunter. The thin Martian air carried weirdly high-pitched cries which proclaimed its craving to sink its fangs into the hunter's body. The drock's huge hind legs coiled back on their triple joints, and it sprang. The hunter thrust the gleaming knife out before him, so that the dark body would land on its gleaming blade. The drock twisted in mid-air and landed to one side of the hunter. Now, before it could gather itself for another spring, there was time for one cast of the blade. It had to be done at once. It had to be perfect. If it failed, the knife would be lost and the drock would have its kill. The hunter grasped the weapon by the blade, drew his arm back, and snapped it forward. The blade struck deep into the throat of the drock. The drock screamed eerily and jumped clumsily. The hunter threw himself at the great, dark body and retrieved the knife. He struck with it again and again into the gray twitching belly. Colorless blood ran out over the hard, tightly-stretched skin. The drock fell, gave a last convulsion, and lay still. The hunter plunged the blade into the red sand to clean it. He threw back his head and bellowed his hunting cry. There was great glory in killing the drock, for it showed that the Desert Man and not the drock, was lord of the red waste.... Gavir sat down on the divan, exhausted, his song finished. He didn't hear the moderator winding up the dreamcast. Then the producer of the program was upon him. He began shouting even before Gavir removed his headset. "What kind of a fool are you? Before you started that song, you dreamed things about the Martian Development Corporation that were libelous! I got the whole thing—the Barrier, the guards, the labor pools and mines, the father crucified. It was awful! MDC is one of our biggest sponsors." Malcomb said, "You can't expect an untrained young Martian to control his very thoughts. And may I point out that your tone is hostile?" At this a sudden change came over the producer. The standard Earth expression—invincible benignity—took control of his face. "I apologize for having spoken sharply, but dreamcasting is a nerve-wracking business. If it weren't for Ethical Conditioning, I don't know how I'd control my aggressive impulses. The Suppression of Aggression is the Foundation of Civilization, eh?" Malcomb smiled. "Ethical Conditioning Keeps Society from Fissioning." He shook hands with the producer. "Come around tomorrow at 1300 and collect your fee," said the producer. "Good night, gentlemen." As they left the Global Dreamcasting System building, Gavir said to Malcomb, "Can we go to a bookstore tonight?" "Tomorrow. I'm taking you to your hotel and then I'm going back to my apartment. We both need sleep. And don't forget, you've been warned not to go prowling around the city by yourself...." As soon as Gavir was sure that Malcomb was out of the hotel and well on his way home, he left his room and went out into the city. In a pitifully few days he would be back in the Preserve, back with the fear of MDC, with hunger and the hopeless desire to find and kill the man who had ordered his father's death. Now he had an opportunity to learn more about the universe of the Earthmen. Despite Malcomb's orders, he was going to find a seller of books. During a reading class at the mission school, Father James had said, "In books there is power. All that you call magic in our Earth civilization is explained in books." Gavir wanted to learn. It was his only hope to find an alternative to the short, fear-ridden, impoverished life he foresaw for himself. A river of force carried him, along with thousands of Earthmen—godlike beings in their perfect health and their impregnable benignity—through the streets of the city. Platforms of force raised and lowered him through the city's multiple levels.... And, as has always happened to outlanders in cities, he became lost. He was in a quarter where furtive red and violet lights danced in the shadows of hunched buildings. A half-dozen Earthmen approached him, stopped and stared. Gavir stared back. The Earthmen wore black garments and furs and metal ornaments. The biggest of them wore a black suit, a long black cape, and a broad-brimmed black hat. He carried a coiled whip in one hand. The Earthmen turned to one another. "A Martian." "Let's give pain and death to the Martian! It will be a new experience—one to savor." "Take pain, Martian!" The Earthman with the black hat raised his arm, and the long heavy lash fell on Gavir. He felt a savage sting in the arm he had thrown up to protect his eyes. Gavir leaped at the Earthmen. He clubbed the man with the whip across the face. As the others rushed in, Gavir flailed about him with long arms and heavy fists. He began to enjoy it. It was rare that a Martian had an opportunity to knock Earthmen down. The mood of the Song of Going to Hunt came over him. He sprang free of his attackers and drew his glittering narvoon. The man with the whip yelled. They looked at his knife, and then all at once turned and ran. Gavir drew back his arm and threw the knife with a practiced catapult-snap of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. To his surprise, the blade clattered to the street far short of his retreating enemies. Then he remembered: you couldn't throw far in the gravity of Earth. The Earthmen disappeared into a lift-force field. Gavir decided not to pursue them. He walked forward and picked up his narvoon, and saw that the street on which it lay was solid black pavement, not a force-field. He must be in the lowest level of the city. He didn't know his way around; he might meet more enemies. He forgot about the books he'd wanted, and began to search for his hotel. When he got back to his room, he went immediately to bed. He slept late. Malcomb woke him at 1100. Gavir told Malcomb about the strangely-dressed men who had tried to kill him. "I told you not to wander around alone." "But you did not tell me that Earthmen might try to kill me. You have told me that Earthmen are good and peace-loving, that there have been no acts of violence on Earth for many decades. You have told me that only the MDC men are exceptions, because they are living off Earth, and this somehow makes them different." "Well, those people you ran into are another exception." "Why?" "You know about the Regeneration and Rejuvenation treatment we have here on Earth. A variation of it was given you to acclimate you to Earth's gravity and atmosphere. Well, since the R&R treatment was developed, we Earthmen have a life-expectancy of about one hundred fifty years. Those people who attacked you were Century-Plus. They are over a hundred years old, but as healthy, physically, as ever." "What is wrong with them?" "They seem to have outgrown their Ethical Conditioning. They live wildly. Violently. It's a problem without precedent, and we don't know what to do with them. The fact is, Senile Delinquency is our number one problem." "Why not punish them?" said Gavir. "They're too powerful. They are often people who've pursued successful careers and acquired a good deal of property and position. And there are getting to be more of them all the time. But come on. You and I have to go over to Global Dreamcasting and collect our fee." The impeccably affable producer of Dreaming Through the Universe gave Malcomb a check and then asked them to follow him. "Mr. Davery wants to see you. Mr. Hoppy Davery, executive vice-president in charge of production. Scion of one of Earth's oldest communications media families!" They went with the producer to the upper reaches of the Global Dreamcasting building. There they were ushered into a huge office. They found Mr. Hoppy Davery lounging on a divan the size of a space-port. He was youthful in appearance, as were all Earthmen, but a soft plumpness and a receding hairline made him look slightly older than average. He pointed a rigid finger at Malcomb and Gavir. "I want you two to hear a condensed recording of statements taken from calls we received last night." Gavir stiffened. They had gotten into trouble because of his thoughts about MDC. A voice boomed out of the ceiling. "That Martian boy has power. That song was a fist in the jaw. More!" A woman's voice followed: "If you let that boy go back to Mars I'll never dream a Global program again." More voices: "Enormous!" "Potent!" "That hunting song drove me mad. I like being mad!" "Keep him on Earth." Hoppy Davery pressed a button in the control panel on his divan, and the voices fell silent. "Those callers that admitted their age were all Century-Plus. The boy appeals to the Century-Plus mentality. I want to try him again. This time on a really big dream-show, not just an educational 'cast. Got a spot on next week's Farfel Flisket Show. If he gets the right response, we talk about a contract. Okay?" Malcomb said, "His visa expires—" "We'll take care of his visa." Gavir trembled with joy. Hoppy Davery pressed another button and a secretary entered with papers. She was followed by another woman. The second woman was dark-haired and slender. She wore leather boots and tight brown breeches. She was bare from the waist up and her breasts were young and full. A jewelled clip fastened a scarlet cape at her neck. Her lips were a disconcertingly vivid red, apparently an artificial color. She kissed Hoppy Davery on the forehead, leaving red blotches on his pink dome. He wiped his forehead and looked at his hand. "Do you have to wear that barbaric face-paint?" Hoppy turned sad eyes on Gavir and Malcomb. "Gentlemen, my mother, Sylvie Davery." A Senile Delinquent! thought Gavir. She looked like Davery's younger sister. Malcomb stared at her apprehensively, and Gavir wondered if she were somehow going to attack them. She looked at Gavir. "Mmm. What a body, what gorgeous blue skin. How tall are you, Blue Boy?" "He's approximately seven feet tall, Sylvie," said Hoppy, "and what do you want here, anyway?" "Just came up to see Blue Boy. One of the crowd dreamed him last night. Positively manic about him. I found out he'd be with you." "See?" said Hoppy to Gavir. "The Century-Plus mentality. You've got something they go for. Undoubtedly because you're—forgive me—such a complete barbarian. That's what they're all trying to be." "Spare me another lecture on Senile Delinquency, Our Number One Problem." She walked to the door and Gavir watched her all the way. She turned with a swirl of scarlet and a dramatic display of healthy young flesh. "See you again, Blue Boy." After Sylvie left, Hoppy Davery said, "That might be a good professional name—Blue Boy. Gavir doesn't mean anything. Now what kind of a song could you do for the Farfel Flisket show?" Gavir thought. "Perhaps you would like the Song of Creation ." "It's part of a fertility rite," Malcomb explained. "Great! Give the Senile Delinquents another workout. It's not quite ethical, but its good for us. But for heaven's sake, Blue Boy, keep your mind off MDC!" The following week, Gavir sang the Song of Creation on the Farfel Flisket show, and transmitted the images which it brought up in his mind to his audience. A jubilant Hoppy Davery called him at his hotel next morning. "Best response I've ever seen! The Century-Plussers have been rioting and throwing mass orgies ever since you sang. But they take time out to call us up and beg for more. I've got a sponsor and a two-year contract lined up for you." The sponsor was pacing back and forth in Hoppy Davery's office when Malcomb and Gavir arrived. Hoppy introduced him proudly. "Mr. Jarvis Spurling, president of the Martian Development Corporation." Gavir's hand leaped at the narvoon under his doublet. Then he stopped himself. He turned the gesture into the proffer of a handshake. "How do you do?" he said quietly. In his mind he congratulated himself. He had learned emotional control from the Earthmen. Here was the man who had ordered his father crucified! Yet he had managed to hide his instant desire to strike, to kill, to carry out the oath of the blood feud then and there. Jarvis Spurling ignored Gavir's hand and stared coldly at him. There was not a trace of the usual Earthman's kindliness in his square, battered face. "I'm told you got talent. Okay, but a Bluie is a Bluie. I'll pay you because a Bluie on Dreamvision is good publicity for MDC products. But one slip like on your first 'cast and you go back to the Preserve." "Mr. Spurling!" said Malcomb. "Your tone is hostile!" "Damn right. That Ethical Conditioning slop doesn't work on me. I've lived too long on the frontier. And I know Bluies." Iwill sign the contract," said Gavir. As he drew his signature pictograph on the contract, Sylvie Davery sauntered in. She held a white tube between her painted lips. The end of the tube was glowing and giving off clouds of smoke. Hoppy Davery coughed and Sylvie winked at Gavir. Gavir straightened up, and she took a long look at his seven feet. "All finished, Blue Boy? Come on, let's go have a drink at Lucifer Grotto." Caution told Gavir to refuse. But before he could speak Spurling snapped, "Disgusting! An Earth woman and a Bluie! If you were on Mars, lady, we'd deport you so fast your tail would burn. And God help the Bluie!" Sylvie blew a cloud of smoke at Spurling. "You're not on Mars, Jack. You're back in civilization where we do what we damned well please." Spurling laughed. "I've heard about you Century-Plussers. You're all sick." "You can't claim any monopoly on mental health. Not with that concentration camp you run on Mars. Coming, Gavir?" Gavir grinned at Spurling. "The contract, I believe, does not cover my private life." Hoppy Davery said, "Sylvie, I don't think this is wise." Sylvie uttered a short, sharp obscenity, linked arms with Gavir, and strolled out. "You screwball Senile Delinquent," Spurling yelled after Sylvie, "you oughtta be locked up!" Lucifer Grotto was in that same quarter in which Gavir had been attacked. Sylvie told him it was the hangout for wealthier New York Century-Plussers. Gavir told her about the attack, and she laughed. "It won't happen again. You're a hero to the Senile Delinquents now. By the way, the big fellow with the broad-brimmed hat, he's one of the most prominent Senile Delinquents of our day. He's president of the biggest privately-owned space line, but he likes to call himself the Hat Rat. You must be one of the few people who ever got away from him alive." "He seemed happy to get away from me," said Gavir. An arrangement of force-planes and 3V projections made the front of Lucifer Grotto appear to be a curtain of flames. Gavir hung back, but Sylvie inserted a tiny gold pitchfork into a small aperture in the glowing, rippling surface. The flames swept aside, revealing a doorway. A bearded man in black tights escorted them through a luridly-lit bar to a private room. When they were alone, Sylvie dropped her cape to the floor, sat on the edge of a huge, pink divan, and smiled at Gavir. Gavir contemplated her. That she was over a hundred years old was a little frightening. But the skin of her face and her bare upper body was a warm color, and tautly filled. She had lashed out at Spurling, and he liked her for that. But in one way she was like Spurling. She didn't fit into the bland, non-violent world of Malcomb and Hoppy. He shook his head. He said, "Sylvie, why—well, why are you the way you are? Why—and how—have you broken away from Ethical Conditioning?" Sylvie frowned. She spoke a few words into the air, ordering drinks. She said, "I didn't do it deliberately. When I reached the age of about a hundred it stopped working for me. I suddenly wanted to do what I wanted to do. And then I found out that I didn't know what I wanted to do. It was Ethical Conditioning or nothing, so I picked nothing. And here I am, chasing nothing." "How do you chase nothing?" She set fire to a white tube. "This, for instance. They used to do it before they found out it caused cancer. Now there's no more cancer, but even if there were, I'd still smoke. That's the attitude I have. You try things. You live in the past, if you're inclined, adopt the costumes and manners of some more colorful time. You try ridiculous things, disgusting things, vicious things. You know they're all nothing, but you have to do something, so you go on doing nothing, elaborately and violently." A tray of drinks rose through the floor. Sylvie frowned as she noticed a folded paper tucked between the glasses. She picked it up and read it, chuckled, and read it again, aloud. "Sir: I beg you to forgive the presumption of my recent attack on you. Since then you have captured my imagination. I now hold you to be the noblest savage of them all. Henceforward please consider me, Your obedient servant, Hat Rat." "You've impressed him," said Sylvie. "But you impress me even more. Come here." She held out slim arms to him. He had no wish to refuse her. She was not like a Martian woman, but he found the differences exciting and attractive. He went to her, and he forgot entirely that she was over a hundred years old. In the months that followed, Gavir's fame spread over Earth. By spring, the rating computers credited him with an audience of eight hundred million—ninety-five percent of whom were Century-Plussers. Davery doubled Gavir's salary. Gavir toured the world with Sylvie, mobbed everywhere by worshipful Century-Plussers. Male Century-Plussers by the millions adopted blue doublets and blue kilts in honor of their hero. Blue-dyed hair was now de rigueur among the ladies of Lucifer Grotto. The Hat Rat himself, who often appeared at a respectful distance in crowds around Gavir, now wore a wide-brimmed hat of brightest blue. Then there came the dreamcast on which Gavir sang the Song of Complaint . It was an ancient song, a Desert Man's outcry against injustice, enemies, false friends and callous leaders. It was a protest against sufferings that could neither be borne nor prevented. At the climax of the song Gavir pictured a tribal chief who refused to make fair division of the spoils of a hunt with his warriors. Gradually he allowed this image to turn into a picture of Hoppy Davery withholding bundles of money from a starving Gavir. Then he ended the song. Hoppy sent for him next morning. "Why did you do that?" he said. "Listen to this." A recorded voice boomed: "This is Hat Rat. Pay the Blue Boy what he deserves, or I will give you death. It will be a personal thing between you and me. I will besprinkle you with corrosive acids; I will burn out your eyes; I will—" Hoppy cut the voice off. Gavir saw that he was sweating. "There were dozens like that. If you want more money, I'll give you more money. Say something nice about me on your next dreamcast, for heaven's sake!" Gavir spread his big blue hands. "I am sorry. I don't want more money. I cannot always control the pictures I make. These images come into my mind even though they have nothing to do with me." Hoppy shook his head. "That's because you haven't had Ethical Conditioning. We don't have this trouble with our other performers. You just must remember that dreamvision is the most potent communications medium ever devised. Be careful ." "I will," said Gavir. On his next dreamcast Gavir sang the Song of the Blood Feud . He pictured a Desert Man whose father had been killed by a drock. The Desert Man ran over the red sand, and he found the drock. He did not throw his knife. That would not have satisfied his hatred. He fell upon the drock and stabbed and stabbed. The Desert Man howled his hunting-cry over the body of his enemy, and spat into its face. And the fanged face of the drock turned into the square, battered face of Jarvis Spurling. Gavir held the image in his mind for a long moment. When the dreamcast was over, a studio page ran up to Gavir. "Mr. Spurling wants to see you at once, at his office." "Let him come and find me," said Gavir. "Let us go, Sylvie." They went to Lucifer Grotto, where Gavir's wealthiest admirers among the Senile Delinquents were giving a party for him in the Pandemonium Room. The only prominent person missing, as Sylvie remarked after surveying the crowd, was the Hat Rat. They wondered about it, but no one knew where he was. Sheets of flame illuminated the wild features and strange garments of over a hundred Century-Plus ladies and gentlemen. Gouts of flame leaped from the walls to light antique-style cigarettes. Drinks were refilled from nozzles of molded fire. An hour passed from the time of Gavir's arrival. Then Jarvis Spurling joined the party. There was a heavy frontier sonic pistol strapped at his waist. A protesting Malcomb was behind him. Jarvis Spurling's square face was dark with anger. "You deliberately put my face on that animal! You want to make the public hate me. I pay your salary and keep you here on Earth, and this is what I get for it. All right. A Bluie is a Bluie, and I'll treat you like a Bluie should be treated." He unsnapped his holster and drew the square, heavy pistol out and pointed it at Gavir. Gavir stood up. His right hand plucked at his doublet. "You're itching to go for that throwing knife," said Spurling. "Go on! Take it out and get ready to throw it. I'll give you that much chance. Let's make a game out of this. We'll make like we're back on Mars, Bluie, and you're out hunting a drock. And you find one, only this drock has a gun. How about that, Bluie?" Gavir took out the narvoon, grasped the blade, and drew his arm back. "Gavir!" It was the Hat Rat. He stood between pillars of flame in the doorway of the Pandemonium Room of Lucifer Grotto, and there was a peculiar contrivance of dark brown wood and black metal tubing cradled in his arm. "This ancient shotgun I dedicate to your blood feud. I shall hunt down your enemy, Gavir!" Spurling turned. The Hat Rat saw him. "The enemy!" the Hat Rat shouted. The shotgun exploded. Spurling's body was thrown back against Gavir. Gavir saw a huge ragged red caved-in place in Spurling's chest. Spurling's body sagged to the floor and lay there face up, eyes open. The Senile Delinquents of Lucifer Grotto leaned forward to grin at the tattered body. Still holding the narvoon, Gavir stood over his dead enemy. He threw back his head and howled out the hunting cry of the Desert Men. Then he looked down and spat in Jarvis Spurling's dead face. END

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juvenile delinquent BY EDWARD W. LUDWIG When everything is either restricted, confidential or top-secret, a Reader is a very bad security risk. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Tick-de-tock, tick-de-tock , whispered the antique clock on the first floor of the house. There was no sound save for the ticking—and for the pounding of Ronnie's heart. He stood alone in his upstairs bedroom. His slender-boned, eight-year-old body trembling, perspiration glittering on his white forehead. To Ronnie, the clock seemed to be saying: Daddy's coming, Daddy's coming. The soft shadows of September twilight in this year of 2056 were seeping into the bedroom. Ronnie welcomed the fall of darkness. He wanted to sink into its deep silence, to become one with it, to escape forever from savage tongues and angry eyes. A burst of hope entered Ronnie's fear-filled eyes. Maybe something would happen. Maybe Dad would have an accident. Maybe— He bit his lip hard, shook his head. No. No matter what Dad might do, it wasn't right to wish— The whirling whine of a gyro-car mushroomed up from the landing platform outside. Ronnie shivered, his pulse quickening. The muscles in his small body were like a web of taut-drawn wires. Sound and movement below. Mom flicking off the controls of the kitchen's Auto-Chef. The slow stride of her high heels through the living room. The slamming of a gyro-car door. The opening of the front door of the house. Dad's deep, happy voice echoed up the stairway: "Hi, beautiful!" Ronnie huddled in the darkness by the half-open bedroom door. Please, Mama , his mind cried, please don't tell Daddy what I did. There was a droning, indistinct murmur. Dad burst, "He was doing what ?" More murmuring. "I can't believe it. You really saw him?... I'll be damned." Ronnie silently closed the bedroom door. Why did you tell him, Mama? Why did you have to tell him? "Ronnie!" Dad called. Ronnie held his breath. His legs seemed as numb and nerveless as the stumps of dead trees. " Ronnie! Come down here! " Like an automaton, Ronnie shuffled out of his bedroom. He stepped on the big silver disk on the landing. The auto-stairs clicked into humming movement under his weight. To his left, on the wall, he caught kaleidoscopic glimpses of Mom's old pictures, copies of paintings by medieval artists like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Dali. The faces seemed to be mocking him. Ronnie felt like a wounded bird falling out of the sky. He saw that Dad and Mom were waiting for him. Mom's round blue eyes were full of mist and sadness. She hadn't bothered to smooth her clipped, creamy-brown hair as she always did when Dad was coming home. And Dad, handsome in his night-black, skin-tight Pentagon uniform, had become a hostile stranger with narrowed eyes of black fire. "Is it true, Ronnie?" asked Dad. "Were you really—really reading a book?" Ronnie gulped. He nodded. "Good Lord," Dad murmured. He took a deep breath and squatted down, held Ronnie's arms and looked hard into his eyes. For an instant he became the kind, understanding father that Ronnie knew. "Tell me all about it, son. Where did you get the book? Who taught you to read?" Ronnie tried to keep his legs from shaking. "It was—Daddy, you won't make trouble, will you?" "This is between you and me, son. We don't care about anyone else." "Well, it was Kenny Davis. He—" Dad's fingers tightened on Ronnie's arms. "Kenny Davis!" he spat. "The boy's no good. His father never had a job in his life. Nobody'd even offer him a job. Why, the whole town knows he's a Reader!" Mom stepped forward. "David, you promised you'd be sensible about this. You promised you wouldn't get angry." Dad grunted. "All right, son. Go ahead." "Well, one day after school Kenny said he'd show me something. He took me to his house—" "You went to that shack ? You actually—" "Dear," said Mom. "You promised." A moment of silence. Ronnie said, "He took me to his house. I met his dad. Mr. Davis is lots of fun. He has a beard and he paints pictures and he's collected almost five hundred books." Ronnie's voice quavered. "Go on," said Dad sternly. "And I—and Mr. Davis said he'd teach me to read them if I promised not to tell anybody. So he taught me a little every day after school—oh, Dad, books are fun to read. They tell you things you can't see on the video or hear on the tapes." "How long ago did all this start? "T—two years ago." Dad rose, fists clenched, staring strangely at nothing. "Two years," he breathed. "I thought I had a good son, and yet for two years—" He shook his head unbelievingly. "Maybe it's my own fault. Maybe I shouldn't have come to this small town. I should have taken a house in Washington instead of trying to commute." "David," said Mom, very seriously, almost as if she were praying, "it won't be necessary to have him memory-washed, will it?" Dad looked at Mom, frowning. Then he gazed at Ronnie. His soft-spoken words were as ominous as the low growl of thunder: "I don't know, Edith. I don't know." Dad strode to his easy chair by the fireplace. He sank into its foam-rubber softness, sighing. He murmured a syllable into a tiny ball-mike on the side of the chair. A metallic hand raised a lighted cigarette to his lips. "Come here, son." Ronnie followed and sat on the hassock by Dad's feet. "Maybe I've never really explained things to you, Ronnie. You see, you won't always be a boy. Someday you'll have to find a way of making a living. You've only two choices: You work for the government, like I do, or for a corporation." Ronnie blinked. "Mr. Davis doesn't work for the gover'ment or for a corpor-ation." "Mr. Davis isn't normal," Dad snapped. "He's a hermit. No decent family would let him in their house. He grows his own food and sometimes he takes care of gardens for people. I want you to have more than that. I want you to have a nice home and be respected by people." Dad puffed furiously on his cigarette. "And you can't get ahead if people know you've been a Reader. That's something you can't live down. No matter how hard you try, people always stumble upon the truth." Dad cleared his throat. "You see, when you get a job, all the information you handle will have a classification. It'll be Restricted, Low-Confidential, Confidential, High-Confidential, Secret, Top-Secret. And all this information will be in writing. No matter what you do, you'll have access to some of this information at one time or another." "B—but why do these things have to be so secret?" Ronnie asked. "Because of competitors, in the case of corporations—or because of enemy nations in the case of government work. The written material you might have access to could describe secret weapons and new processes or plans for next year's advertising—maybe even a scheme for, er, liquidation of a rival. If all facts and policies were made public, there might be criticism, controversy, opposition by certain groups. The less people know about things, the better. So we have to keep all these things secret." Ronnie scowled. "But if things are written down, someone has to read them, don't they?" "Sure, son. One person in ten thousand might reach the point where his corporation or bureau will teach him to read. But you prove your ability and loyalty first. By the time you're 35 or 40, they might want you to learn to read. But for young people and children—well, it just isn't done. Why, the President himself wasn't trusted to learn till he was nearly fifty!" Dad straightened his shoulders. "Look at me. I'm only 30, but I've been a messenger for Secret material already. In a few years, if things go well, I should be handling Top -Secret stuff. And who knows? Maybe by the time I'm 50 I'll be giving orders instead of carrying them. Then I'll learn to read, too. That's the right way to do it." Ronnie shifted uncomfortably on the hassock. "But can't a Reader get a job that's not so important. Like a barber or a plumber or—" "Don't you understand? The barber and plumbing equipment corporations set up their stores and hire men to work for them. You think they'd hire a Reader? People'd say you were a spy or a subversive or that you're crazy like old man Davis." "Mr. Davis isn't crazy. And he isn't old. He's young, just like you, and—" "Ronnie!" Dad's voice was knife-sharp and December-cold. Ronnie slipped off the hassock as if struck physically by the fury of the voice. He sat sprawled on his small posterior, fresh fear etched on his thin features. "Damn it, son, how could you even think of being a Reader? You've got a life-sized, 3-D video here, and we put on the smell and touch and heat attachments just for you. You can listen to any tape in the world at school. Ronnie, don't you realize I'd lose my job if people knew I had a Reader for a son?" "B—but, Daddy—" Dad jumped to his feet. "I hate to say it, Edith, but we've got to put this boy in a reformatory. Maybe a good memory-wash will take some of the nonsense out of him!" Ronnie suppressed a sob. "No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain. Please—" Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. "They won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years." A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. "David, I didn't want anything like this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to school all over again." Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. "Lord, Edith, I don't know what to do." He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. "You can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions." Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the bottom of a cold, thick sea. "David," Mom finally said. "Yes?" "There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—" Dad interrupted: "But he'd still remember how to read, unconsciously anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life." Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. "Edith, what kind of a book was he reading?" A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. "There were three books on his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading." Dad groaned. " Three of them. Did you burn them?" "No, dear, not yet." "Why not?" "I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe tonight, after you d seen them—" "Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things." Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet. Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were touching a rotting corpse. "Old," he mused, "—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a hundred years ago." A sudden frown contorted his dark features. Tick-de-tock, tick-de-tock , said the antique clock. "A hundred years old," he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line. "Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the trap so easily." "What do you mean, David?" Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to his face. "It's your fault, Edith. You've always liked old things. That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie—stamps dated way back to the 1940's." Mom's face paled. "I don't understand." "You've interested Ronnie in old things. To a child in its formative years, in a pleasant house, these things symbolize peace and security. Ronnie's been conditioned from the very time of his birth to like old things. It was natural for him to be attracted by books. And we were just too stupid to realize it." Mom whispered hoarsely, "I'm sorry, David." Hot anger flashed in Dad's eyes. "It isn't enough to be sorry. Don't you see what this means? Ronnie'll have to be memory-washed back to the time of birth. He'll have to start life all over again." "No, David, no!" "And in my position I can't afford to have an eight-year-old son with the mind of a new-born baby. It's got to be Abandonment, Edith, there's no other way. The boy can start life over in a reformatory, with a complete memory-wash. He'll never know we existed, and he'll never bother us again." Mom ran up to Dad. She put her hands on his shoulders. Great sobs burst from her shaking body. "You can't, David! I won't let—" He slapped her then with the palm of his hand. The sound was like a pistol shot in the hot, tight air. Dad stood now like a colossus carved of black ice. His right hand was still upraised, ready to strike again. Then his hand fell. His mind seemed to be toying with a new thought, a new concept. He seized one of the books on the hassock. "Edith," he said crisply, "just what was Ronnie reading? What's the name of this book?" " The—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ," said Mom through her sobs. He grabbed the second book, held it before her shimmering vision. "And the name of this?" " Tarzan of The Apes. " Mom's voice was a barely audible croak. "Who's the author?" "Edgar Rice Burroughs." "And this one?" " The Wizard of Oz. " "Who wrote it?" "L. Frank Baum." He threw the books to the floor. He stepped backward. His face was a mask of combined sorrow, disbelief, and rage. " Edith. " He spat the name as if it were acid on his tongue. "Edith, you can read !" Mom sucked in her sobs. Her chalk-white cheeks were still streaked with rivulets of tears. "I'm sorry, David. I've never told anyone—not even Ronnie. I haven't read a book, haven't even looked at one since we were married. I've tried to be a good wife—" "A good wife." Dad sneered. His face was so ugly that Ronnie looked away. Mom continued, "I—I learned when I was just a girl. I was young like Ronnie. You know how young people are—reckless, eager to do forbidden things." "You lied to me," Dad snapped. "For ten years you've lied to me. Why did you want to read, Edith? Why? " Mom was silent for a few seconds. She was breathing heavily, but no longer crying. A calmness entered her features, and for the first time tonight Ronnie saw no fear in her eyes. "I wanted to read," she said, her voice firm and proud, "because, as Ronnie said, it's fun. The video's nice, with its dancers and lovers and Indians and spacemen—but sometimes you want more than that. Sometimes you want to know how people feel deep inside and how they think. And there are beautiful words and beautiful thoughts, just like there are beautiful paintings. It isn't enough just to hear them and then forget them. Sometimes you want to keep the words and thoughts before you because in that way you feel that they belong to you." Her words echoed in the room until absorbed by the ceaseless, ticking clock. Mom stood straight and unashamed. Dad's gaze traveled slowly to Ronnie, to Mom, to the clock, back and forth. At last he said, "Get out." Mom stared blankly. "Get out. Both of you. You can send for your things later. I never want to see either of you again." "David—" "I said get out !" Ronnie and Mom left the house. Outside, the night was dark and a wind was rising. Mom shivered in her thin house cloak. "Where will we go, Ronnie? Where, where—" "I know a place. Maybe we can stay there—for a little while." "A little while?" Mom echoed. Her mind seemed frozen by the cold wind. Ronnie led her through the cold, windy streets. They left the lights of the town behind them. They stumbled over a rough, dirt country road. They came to a small, rough-boarded house in the deep shadow of an eucalyptus grove. The windows of the house were like friendly eyes of warm golden light. An instant later a door opened and a small boy ran out to meet them. "Hi, Kenny." "Hi. Who's that? Your mom?" "Yep. Mr. Davis in?" "Sure." And a kindly-faced, bearded young man appeared in the golden doorway, smiling. Ronnie and Mom stepped inside.

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THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR BY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW The noise was too much for him. He wanted quiet—at any price. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] When Joseph got to the office his ears were aching from the noise of the copter and from his earplugs. Lately, every little thing seemed to make him irritable. He supposed it was because his drafting department was behind schedule on the latest Defense contract. His ears were sore and his stomach writhed with dyspepsia, and his feet hurt. Walking through the clerical office usually made him feel better. The constant clatter of typewriters and office machines gave him a sense of efficiency, of stability, an all-is-well-with-the-world feeling. He waved to a few of the more familiar employees and smiled, but of course you couldn't say hello with the continual racket. This morning, somehow, it didn't make him feel better. He supposed it was because of the song they were playing over the speakers, "Slam Bang Boom," the latest Top Hit. He hated that song. Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object, even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it over the other noise. In his own office the steady din was hardly diminished despite soundproofing, and since he was next to an outside wall he was subjected also to the noises of the city. He stood staring out of the huge window for awhile, watching the cars on the freeway and listening to the homogeneous rumble and scream of turbines. Something's wrong with me , he thought. I shouldn't be feeling this way. Nerves. Nerves. He turned around and got his private secretary on the viewer. She simpered at him, trying to be friendly with her dull, sunken eyes. "Betty," he told her, "I want you to make an appointment with my therapist for me this afternoon. Tell him it's just a case of nerves, though." "Yes sir. Anything else?" Her voice, like every one's, was a high pitched screech trying to be heard above the noise. Joseph winced. "Anybody want to see me this morning?" "Well, Mr. Wills says he has the first model of his invention ready to show you." "Let him in whenever he's ready. Otherwise, if nothing important comes up, I want you to leave me alone." "Yes, sir, certainly." She smiled again, a mechanical, automatic smile that seemed to want to be something more. Joseph switched off. That was a damn funny way of saying it , he thought. "I want you to leave me alone." As if somebody were after me. He spent about an hour on routine paperwork and then Bob Wills showed up so Joseph switched off his dictograph and let him in. "I'm afraid you'll have to make it brief, Bob," he grinned. "I've a whale of a lot of work to do, and I seem to be developing a splitting headache. Nerves, you know." "Sure, Mister Partch. I won't take a minute; I just thought you'd like to have a look at the first model of our widget and get clued in on our progress so far...." "Yes, yes, just go ahead. How does the thing work?" Bob smiled and set the grey steel chassis on Partch's desk, sat down in front of it, and began tracing the wiring for Joseph. It was an interesting problem, or at any rate should have been. It was one that had been harassing cities, industry, and particularly air-fields, for many years. Of course, every one wore earplugs—and that helped a little. And some firms had partially solved the problem by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men mad, and sometimes kill them. There had never seemed to be any wholly satisfactory solution. But now Bob Wills apparently had the beginnings of a real answer. A device that would use the principle of interference to cancel out sound waves, leaving behind only heat. It should have been fascinating to Partch, but somehow he couldn't make himself get interested in it. "The really big problem is the power requirement," Wills was saying. "We've got to use a lot of energy to cancel out big sound waves, but we've got several possible answers in mind and we're working on all of them." He caressed the crackle-finish box fondly. "The basic gimmick works fine, though. Yesterday I took it down to a static test stand over in building 90 and had them turn on a pretty fair-sized steering rocket for one of the big moon-ships. Reduced the noise-level by about 25 per cent, it did. Of course, I still needed my plugs." Joseph nodded approvingly and stared vacantly into the maze of transistors and tubes. "I've built it to work on ordinary 60 cycle house current," Wills told him. "In case you should want to demonstrate it to anybody." Partch became brusque. He liked Bob, but he had work to do. "Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell you what, why don't you just leave it here in my office and I'll look it over later, hm?" "Okay, Mr. Partch." Joseph ushered him out of the office, complimenting him profusely on the good work he was doing. Only after he was gone and Joseph was alone again behind the closed door, did he realize that he had a sudden yearning for company, for someone to talk to. Partch had Betty send him in a light lunch and he sat behind his desk nibbling the tasteless stuff without much enthusiasm. He wondered if he was getting an ulcer. Yes, he decided, he was going to have to have a long talk with Dr. Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure to get it all off his chest, his feeling of melancholia, his latent sense of doom. Be good just to talk about it. Oh, everything was getting to him these days. He was in a rut, that was it. A rut. He spat a sesame seed against the far wall and the low whir of the automatic vacuum cleaner rose and fell briefly. Joseph winced. The speakers were playing "Slam Bang Boom" again. His mind turned away from the grating melody in self defense, to look inward on himself. Of what, after all, did Joseph Partch's life consist? He licked his fingers and thought about it. What would he do this evening after work, for instance? Why, he'd stuff his earplugs back in his inflamed ears and board the commuter's copter and ride for half an hour listening to the drumming of the rotors and the pleading of the various canned commercials played on the copter's speakers loud enough to be heard over the engine noise and through the plugs. And then when he got home, there would be the continuous yammer of his wife added to the Tri-Di set going full blast and the dull food from the automatic kitchen. And synthetic coffee and one stale cigaret. Perhaps a glass of brandy to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles approved. Partch brooded. The sense of foreboding had been submerged in the day's work, but it was still there. It was as if, any moment, a hydrogen bomb were going to be dropped down the chimney, and you had no way of knowing when. And what would there be to do after he had finished dinner that night? Why, the same things he had been doing every night for the past fifteen years. There would be Tri-Di first of all. The loud comedians, and the musical commercials, and the loud bands, and the commercials, and the loud songs.... And every twenty minutes or so, the viewer would jangle with one of Felicia's friends calling up, and more yammering from Felicia. Perhaps there would be company that night, to play cards and sip drinks and talk and talk and talk, and never say a thing at all. There would be aircraft shaking the house now and then, and the cry of the monorail horn at intervals. And then, at last, it would be time to go to bed, and the murmur of the somnolearner orating him on the Theory of Groups all through the long night. And in the morning, he would be shocked into awareness with the clangor of the alarm clock and whatever disc jockey the clock radio happened to tune in on. Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided. Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if all the sounds were once taken away. Why , after all, was the world of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something lacking. Or something they were afraid of. Like a little boy whistling loudly as he walks by a cemetery at night. Partch got out of his chair and stared out the window again. There was a fire over on the East Side, a bad one by the smoke. The fire engines went screaming through the streets like wounded dragons. Sirens, bells. Police whistles. All at once, Partch realized that never in his life had he experienced real quiet or solitude. That actually, he had no conception of what an absence of thunder and wailing would be like. A total absence of sound and noise. Almost, it was like trying to imagine what a negation of space would be like. And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a rocket motor. And the machine worked on ordinary house current, Bob had said. Partch had an almost horrifying idea. Suppose.... But what would Dr. Coles say about this, Partch wondered. Oh, he had to get a grip on himself. This was silly, childish.... But looking down, he found that he had already plugged in the line cord. An almost erotic excitement began to shake Joseph's body. The sense of disaster had surged up anew, but he didn't recognize it yet. An absence of sound ? No! Silly! Then a fire engine came tearing around the corner just below the window, filling the office with an ocean of noise. Joseph's hand jerked and flicked the switch. And then the dream came back to him, the nightmare of the night before that had precipitated, unknown to him, his mood of foreboding. It came back to him with stark realism and flooded him with unadorned fear. In the dream, he had been in a forest. Not just the city park, but a real forest, one thousands of miles and centuries away from human civilization. A wood in which the foot of Man had never trod. It was dark there, and the trees were thick and tall. There was no wind, the leaves were soft underfoot. And Joseph Partch was all alone, completely alone. And it was—quiet. Doctor Coles looked at the patient on the white cot sadly. "I've only seen a case like it once before in my entire career, Dr. Leeds." Leeds nodded. "It is rather rare. Look at him—total catatonia. He's curled into a perfect foetal position. Never be the same again, I'm afraid." "The shock must have been tremendous. An awful psychic blow, especially to a person as emotionally disturbed as Mr. Partch was." "Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills' is extremely dangerous. What amazes me is that it didn't kill Partch altogether. Good thing we got to him when we did." Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw. "Yes, you know it is incredible how much the human mind can sometimes take, actually. As you say, it's a wonder it didn't kill him." He shook his head. "Perfectly horrible. How could any modern human stand it? Two hours, he was alone with that machine. Imagine— two hours of total silence!"

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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories April-May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. MARS CONFIDENTIAL! Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer Illustrator : L. R. Summers Here is history's biggest news scoop! Those intrepid reporters Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, whose best-selling exposes of life's seamy side from New York to Medicine Hat have made them famous, here strip away the veil of millions of miles to bring you the lowdown on our sister planet. It is an amazing account of vice and violence, of virtues and victims, told in vivid, jet-speed style. Here you'll learn why Mars is called the Red Planet, the part the Mafia plays in her undoing, the rape and rapine that has made this heavenly body the cesspool of the Universe. In other words, this is Mars—Confidential! P-s-s-s-s-t! HERE WE GO AGAIN—Confidential. We turned New York inside out. We turned Chicago upside down. In Washington we turned the insiders out and the outsiders in. The howls can still be heard since we dissected the U.S.A. But Mars was our toughest task of spectroscoping. The cab drivers spoke a different language and the bell-hops couldn't read our currency. Yet, we think we have X-rayed the dizziest—and this may amaze you—the dirtiest planet in the solar system. Beside it, the Earth is as white as the Moon, and Chicago is as peaceful as the Milky Way. By the time we went through Mars—its canals, its caves, its satellites and its catacombs—we knew more about it than anyone who lives there. We make no attempt to be comprehensive. We have no hope or aim to make Mars a better place in which to live; in fact, we don't give a damn what kind of a place it is to live in. This will be the story of a planet that could have been another proud and majestic sun with a solar system of its own; it ended up, instead, in the comic books and the pulp magazines. We give you MARS CONFIDENTIAL! I THE LOWDOWN CONFIDENTIAL Before the space ship which brings the arriving traveler lands at the Martian National Airport, it swoops gracefully over the nearby city in a salute. The narrow ribbons, laid out in geometric order, gradually grow wider until the water in these man-made rivers becomes crystal clear and sparkles in the reflection of the sun. As Mars comes closer, the visitor from Earth quickly realizes it has a manner and a glamor of its own; it is unworldy, it is out of this world. It is not the air of distinction one finds in New York or London or Paris. The Martian feeling is dreamlike; it comes from being close to the stuff dreams are made of. However, after the sojourner lands, he discovers that Mars is not much different than the planet he left; indeed, men are pretty much the same all over the universe, whether they carry their plumbing inside or outside their bodies. As we unfold the rates of crime, vice, sex irregularities, graft, cheap gambling, drunkenness, rowdyism and rackets, you will get, thrown on a large screen, a peep show you never saw on your TV during the science-fiction hour. Each day the Earth man spends on Mars makes him feel more at home; thus, it comes as no surprise to the initiated that even here, at least 35,000,000 miles away from Times Square, there are hoodlums who talk out of the sides of their mouths and drive expensive convertibles with white-walled tires and yellow-haired frails. For the Mafia, the dread Black Hand, is in business here—tied up with the subversives—and neither the Martian Committee for the Investigation of Crime and Vice, nor the Un-Martian Activities Committee, can dent it more than the Kefauver Committee did on Earth, which is practically less than nothing. This is the first time this story has been printed. We were offered four trillion dollars in bribes to hold it up; our lives were threatened and we were shot at with death ray guns. We got this one night on the fourth bench in Central Park, where we met by appointment a man who phoned us earlier but refused to tell his name. When we took one look at him we did not ask for his credentials, we just knew he came from Mars. This is what he told us: Shortly after the end of World War II, a syndicate composed of underworld big-shots from Chicago, Detroit and Greenpoint planned to build a new Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. This was to be a plush project for big spenders, with Vegas and Reno reserved for the hoi-polloi. There was to be service by a private airline. It would be so ultra-ultra that suckers with only a million would be thumbed away and guys with two million would have to come in through the back door. The Mafia sent a couple of front men to explore the desert. Somewhere out beyond the atom project they stumbled on what seemed to be the answer to their prayer. It was a huge, mausoleum-like structure, standing alone in the desert hundreds of miles from nowhere, unique, exclusive and mysterious. The prospectors assumed it was the last remnant of some fabulous and long-dead ghost-mining town. The entire population consisted of one, a little duffer with a white goatee and thick lensed spectacles, wearing boots, chaps and a silk hat. "This your place, bud?" one of the hoods asked. When he signified it was, the boys bought it. The price was agreeable—after they pulled a wicked-looking rod. Then the money guys came to look over their purchase. They couldn't make head or tail of it, and you can hardly blame them, because inside the great structure they found a huge contraption that looked like a cigar (Havana Perfecto) standing on end. "What the hell is this," they asked the character in the opera hat, in what is known as a menacing attitude. The old pappy guy offered to show them. He escorted them into the cigar, pressed a button here and there, and before you could say "Al Capone" the roof of the shed slid back and they began to move upward at a terrific rate of speed. Three or four of the Mafia chieftains were old hop-heads and felt at home. In fact, one of them remarked, "Boy, are we gone." And he was right. The soberer Mafistas, after recovering from their first shock, laid ungentle fists on their conductor. "What goes on?" he was asked. "This is a space ship and we are headed for Mars." "What's Mars?" "A planet up in space, loaded with gold and diamonds." "Any bims there?" "I beg your pardon, sir. What are bims?" "Get a load of this dope. He never heard of bims. Babes, broads, frails, pigeons, ribs—catch on?" "Oh, I assume you mean girls. There must be, otherwise what are the diamonds for?" The outward trip took a week, but it was spent pleasantly. During that time, the Miami delegation cleaned out Chicago, New York and Pittsburgh in a klabiash game. The hop back, for various reasons, took a little longer. One reason may have been the condition of the crew. On the return the boys from Brooklyn were primed to the ears with zorkle . Zorkle is a Martian medicinal distillation, made from the milk of the schznoogle —a six-legged cow, seldom milked because few Martians can run fast enough to catch one. Zorkle is strong enough to rip steel plates out of battleships, but to stomachs accustomed to the stuff sold in Flatbush, it acted like a gentle stimulant. Upon their safe landing in Nevada, the Columbuses of this first flight to Mars put in long-distance calls to all the other important hoods in the country. The Crime Cartel met in Cleveland—in the third floor front of a tenement on Mayfield Road. The purpose of the meeting was to "cut up" Mars. Considerable dissension arose over the bookmaking facilities, when it was learned that the radioactive surface of the planet made it unnecessary to send scratches and results by wire. On the contrary, the steel-shod hooves of the animals set up a current which carried into every pool room, without a pay-off to the wire service. The final division found the apportionment as follows: New York mob : Real estate and investments (if any) Chicago mob : Bookmaking and liquor (if any) Brooklyn mob : Protection and assassinations Jersey mob : Numbers (if any) and craps (if any) Los Angeles mob : Girls (if any) Galveston and New Orleans mobs : Dope (if any) Cleveland mob : Casinos (if any) Detroit mob : Summer resorts (if any) The Detroit boys, incidentally, burned up when they learned the Martian year is twice as long as ours, consequently it takes two years for one summer to roll around. After the summary demise of three Grand Councilors whose deaths were recorded by the press as occurring from "natural causes," the other major and minor mobs were declared in as partners. The first problem to be ironed out was how to speed up transportation; and failing that, to construct spacious space ships which would attract pleasure-bent trade from Terra —Earth to you—with such innovations as roulette wheels, steam rooms, cocktail lounges, double rooms with hot and cold babes, and other such inducements. II THE INSIDE STUFF CONFIDENTIAL Remember, you got this first from Lait and Mortimer. And we defy anyone to call us liars—and prove it! Only chumps bring babes with them to Mars. The temperature is a little colder there than on Earth and the air a little thinner. So Terra dames complain one mink coat doesn't keep them warm; they need two. On the other hand, the gravity is considerably less than on Earth. Therefore, even the heaviest bim weighs less and can be pushed over with the greatest of ease. However, the boys soon discovered that the lighter gravity played havoc with the marijuana trade. With a slight tensing of the muscles you can jump 20 feet, so why smoke "tea" when you can fly like crazy for nothing? Martian women are bags, so perhaps you had better disregard the injunction above and bring your own, even if it means two furs. Did you ever see an Alaska klutch (pronounced klootch)? Probably not. Well, these Arctic horrors are Ziegfeld beauts compared to the Martian fair sex. They slouch with knees bent and knuckles brushing the ground, and if Ringling Bros, is looking for a mate for Gargantua, here is where to find her. Yet, their manner is habitually timid, as though they've been given a hard time. From the look in their deep-set eyes they seem to fear abduction or rape; but not even the zoot-suited goons from Greenpernt gave them a second tumble. The visiting Mafia delegation was naturally disappointed at this state of affairs. They had been led to believe by the little guy who escorted them that all Martian dames resembled Marilyn Monroe, only more so, and the men were Adonises (and not Joe). Seems they once were, at that. This was a couple of aeons ago when Earthmen looked like Martians do now, which seems to indicate that Martians, as well as Men, have their ups and downs. The citizens of the planet are apparently about halfway down the toboggan. They wear clothes, but they're not handstitched. Their neckties don't come from Sulka. No self-respecting goon from Gowanus would care to be seen in their company. The females always appear in public fully clothed, which doesn't help them either. But covering their faces would. They buy their dresses at a place called Kress-Worth and look like Paris nouveau riche . There are four separate nations there, though nation is hardly the word. It is more accurate to say there are four separate clans that don't like each other, though how they can tell the difference is beyond us. They are known as the East Side, West Side, North Side and Gas House gangs. Each stays in its own back-yard. Periodic wars are fought, a few thousand of the enemy are dissolved with ray guns, after which the factions retire by common consent and throw a banquet at which the losing country is forced to take the wives of the visitors, which is a twist not yet thought of on Earth. Martian language is unlike anything ever heard below. It would baffle the keenest linguist, if the keenest linguist ever gets to Mars. However, the Mafia, which is a world-wide blood brotherhood with colonies in every land and clime, has a universal language. Knives and brass knucks are understood everywhere. The Martian lingo seems to be somewhat similar to Chinese. It's not what they say, but how they say it. For instance, psonqule may mean "I love you" or "you dirty son-of-a-bitch." The Mafistas soon learned to translate what the natives were saying by watching the squint in their eyes. When they spoke with a certain expression, the mobsters let go with 45s, which, however, merely have a stunning effect on the gent on the receiving end because of the lesser gravity. On the other hand, the Martian death ray guns were not fatal to the toughs from Earth; anyone who can live through St. Valentine's Day in Chicago can live through anything. So it came out a dead heat. Thereupon the boys from the Syndicate sat down and declared the Martians in for a fifty-fifty partnership, which means they actually gave them one per cent, which is generous at that. Never having had the great advantages of a New Deal, the Martians are still backward and use gold as a means of exchange. With no Harvard bigdomes to tell them gold is a thing of the past, the yellow metal circulates there as freely and easily as we once kicked pennies around before they became extinct here. The Mafistas quickly set the Martians right about the futility of gold. They eagerly turned it over to the Earthmen in exchange for green certificates with pretty pictures engraved thereon. III RACKETS VIA ROCKETS Gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious stuff are as plentiful on Mars as hayfever is on Earth in August. When the gangsters lamped the loot, their greedy eyes and greasy fingers twitched, and when a hood's eyes and fingers twitch, watch out; something is twitching. The locals were completely honest. They were too dumb to be thieves. The natives were not acquisitive. Why should they be when gold was so common it had no value, and a neighbor's wife so ugly no one would covet her? This was a desperate situation, indeed, until one of the boys from East St. Louis uttered the eternal truth: "There ain't no honest man who ain't a crook, and why should Mars be any different?" The difficulty was finding the means and method of corruption. All the cash in Jake Guzik's strong box meant nothing to a race of characters whose brats made mudpies of gold dust. The discovery came as an accident. The first Earthman to be eliminated on Mars was a two-bit hood from North Clark Street who sold a five-cent Hershey bar with almonds to a Martian for a gold piece worth 94 bucks. The man from Mars bit the candy bar. The hood bit the gold piece. Then the Martian picked up a rock and beaned the lad from the Windy City. After which the Martian's eyes dilated and he let out a scream. Then he attacked the first Martian female who passed by. Never before had such a thing happened on Mars, and to say she was surprised is putting it lightly. Thereupon, half the female population ran after the berserk Martian. When the organization heard about this, an investigation was ordered. That is how the crime trust found out that there is no sugar on Mars; that this was the first time it had ever been tasted by a Martian; that it acts on them like junk does on an Earthman. They further discovered that the chief source of Martian diet is—believe it or not—poppy seed, hemp and coca leaf, and that the alkaloids thereof: opium, hasheesh and cocaine have not the slightest visible effect on them. Poppies grow everywhere, huge russet poppies, ten times as large as those on Earth and 100 times as deadly. It is these poppies which have colored the planet red. Martians are strictly vegetarian: they bake, fry and stew these flowers and weeds and eat them raw with a goo made from fungus and called szchmortz which passes for a salad dressing. Though the Martians were absolutely impervious to the narcotic qualities of the aforementioned flora, they got higher than Mars on small doses of sugar. So the Mafia was in business. The Martians sniffed granulated sugar, which they called snow. They ate cube sugar, which they called "hard stuff", and they injected molasses syrup into their veins with hypos and called this "mainliners." There was nothing they would not do for a pinch of sugar. Gold, platinum and diamonds, narcotics by the acre—these were to be had in generous exchange for sugar—which was selling on Earth at a nickel or so a pound wholesale. The space ship went into shuttle service. A load of diamonds and dope coming back, a load of sugar and blondes going up. Blondes made Martians higher even than sugar, and brought larger and quicker returns. This is a confidential tip to the South African diamond trust: ten space ship loads of precious stones are now being cut in a cellar on Bleecker Street in New York. The mob plans to retail them for $25 a carat! Though the gangsters are buying sugar at a few cents a pound here and selling it for its weight in rubies on Mars, a hood is always a hood. They've been cutting dope with sugar for years on Earth, so they didn't know how to do it any different on Mars. What to cut the sugar with on Mars? Simple. With heroin, of course, which is worthless there. This is a brief rundown on the racket situation as it currently exists on our sister planet. FAKED PASSPORTS : When the boys first landed they found only vague boundaries between the nations, and Martians could roam as they pleased. Maybe this is why they stayed close to home. Though anyway why should they travel? There was nothing to see. The boys quickly took care of this. First, in order to make travel alluring, they brought 20 strippers from Calumet City and set them peeling just beyond the border lines. Then they went to the chieftains and sold them a bill of goods (with a generous bribe of sugar) to close the borders. The next step was to corrupt the border guards, which was easy with Annie Oakleys to do the burlesque shows. The selling price for faked passports fluctuates between a ton and three tons of platinum. VICE : Until the arrival of the Earthmen, there were no illicit sexual relations on the planet. In fact, no Martian in his right mind would have relations with the native crop of females, and they in turn felt the same way about the males. Laws had to be passed requiring all able-bodied citizens to marry and propagate. Thus, the first load of bims from South Akard Street in Dallas found eager customers. But these babes, who romanced anything in pants on earth, went on a stand-up strike when they saw and smelled the Martians. Especially smelled. They smelled worse than Texas yahoos just off a cow farm. This proved embarrassing, to say the least, to the procurers. Considerable sums of money were invested in this human cargo, and the boys feared dire consequences from their shylocks, should they return empty-handed. In our other Confidential essays we told you how the Mafia employs some of the best brains on Earth to direct and manage its far-flung properties, including high-priced attorneys, accountants, real-estate experts, engineers and scientists. A hurried meeting of the Grand Council was called and held in a bungalow on the shores of one of Minneapolis' beautiful lakes. The decision reached there was to corner chlorophyll (which accounts in part for the delay in putting it on the market down here) and ship it to Mars to deodorize the populace there. After which the ladies of the evening got off their feet and went back to work. GAMBLING : Until the arrival of the Mafia, gambling on Mars was confined to a simple game played with children's jacks. The loser had to relieve the winner of his wife. The Mafia brought up some fine gambling equipment, including the layouts from the Colonial Inn in Florida, and the Beverly in New Orleans, both of which were closed, and taught the residents how to shoot craps and play the wheel, with the house putting up sugar against precious stones and metals. With such odds, it was not necessary to fake the games more than is customary on Earth. IV LITTLE NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL Despite what Earth-bound professors tell you about the Martian atmosphere, we know better. They weren't there. It is a dogma that Mars has no oxygen. Baloney. While it is true that there is considerably less than on Earth in the surface atmosphere, the air underground, in caves, valleys and tunnels, has plenty to support life lavishly, though why Martians want to live after they look at each other we cannot tell you, even confidential. For this reason Martian cities are built underground, and travel between them is carried on through a complicated system of subways predating the New York IRT line by several thousand centuries, though to the naked eye there is little difference between a Brooklyn express and a Mars express, yet the latter were built before the Pyramids. When the first load of Black Handers arrived, they naturally balked against living underground. It reminded them too much of the days before they went "legitimate" and were constantly on the lam and hiding out. So the Mafia put the Martians to work building a town. There are no building materials on the planet, but the Martians are adept at making gold dust hold together with diamond rivets. The result of their effort—for which they were paid in peppermint sticks and lump sugar—is named Little New York, with hotels, nightclubs, bars, haberdashers, Turkish baths and horse rooms. Instead of air-conditioning, it had oxygen-conditioning. But the town had no police station. There were no cops! Finally, a meeting was held at which one punk asked another, "What the hell kind of town is it with no cops? Who we going to bribe?" After some discussion they cut cards. One of the Bergen County boys drew the black ace. "What do I know about being a cop?" he squawked. "You can take graft, can't you? You been shook down, ain't you?" The boys also imported a couple of smart mouthpieces and a ship of blank habeas corpus forms, together with a judge who was the brother of one of the lawyers, so there was no need to build a jail in this model city. The only ones who ever get arrested, anyway, are the Martians, and they soon discovered that the coppers from Terra would look the other way for a bucket full of gold. Until the arrival of the Earthmen, the Martians were, as stated, peaceful, and even now crime is practically unknown among them. The chief problem, however, is to keep them in line on pay nights, when they go on sugar binges. Chocolate bars are as common on Mars as saloons are on Broadway, and it is not unusual to see "gone" Martians getting heaved out of these bars right into the gutter. One nostalgic hood from Seattle said it reminded him of Skid Row there. V THE RED RED PLANET The gangsters had not been on Mars long before they heard rumors about other outsiders who were supposed to have landed on the other side of Mt. Sirehum . The boys got together in a cocktail lounge to talk this over, and they decided they weren't going to stand for any other mobs muscling in. Thereupon, they despatched four torpedoes with Tommy guns in a big black limousine to see what was going. We tell you this Confidential. What they found was a Communist apparatus sent to Mars from Soviet Russia. This cell was so active that Commies had taken over almost half the planet before the arrival of the Mafia, with their domain extending from the Deucalionis Region all the way over to Phaethontis and down to Titania . Furthermore, through propaganda and infiltration, there were Communist cells in every quarter of the planet, and many of the top officials of the four Martian governments were either secretly party members or openly in fronts. The Communist battle cry was: "Men of Mars unite; you have nothing to lose but your wives." Comes the revolution, they were told, and all Martians could remain bachelors. It is no wonder the Communists made such inroads. The planet became known as "The Red Red Planet." In their confidential books about the cities of Earth, Lait and Mortimer explored the community of interest between the organized underworld and the Soviet. Communists are in favor of anything that causes civil disorder and unrest; gangsters have no conscience and will do business with anyone who pays. On Earth, Russia floods the Western powers, and especially the United States, with narcotics, first to weaken them and provide easy prey, and second, for dollar exchange. And on Earth, the Mafia, which is another international conspiracy like the Communists, sells the narcotics. And so when the gangsters heard there were Communist cells on Mars, they quickly made a contact. For most of the world's cheap sugar comes from Russia! The Mafia inroad on the American sugar market had already driven cane up more than 300 per cent. But the Russians were anxious, able and willing to provide all the beets they wanted at half the competitive price. VI THE HONEST HOODS As we pointed out in previous works, the crime syndicate now owns so much money, its chief problem is to find ways in which to invest it. As a result, the Mafia and its allies control thousands of legitimate enterprises ranging from hotel chains to railroads and from laundries to distilleries. And so it was on Mars. With all the rackets cornered, the gangsters decided it was time to go into some straight businesses. At the next get-together of the Grand Council, the following conversation was heard: "What do these mopes need that they ain't getting?" "A big fat hole in the head." "Cut it out. This is serious." "A hole in the head ain't serious?" "There's no profit in them one-shot deals." "It's the repeat business you make the dough on." "Maybe you got something there. You can kill a jerk only once." "But a jerk can have relatives." "We're talking about legit stuff. All the rest has been taken care of." "With the Martians I've seen, a bar of soap could be a big thing." From this random suggestion, there sprang up a major interplanetary project. If the big soap companies are wondering where all that soap went a few years ago, we can tell them. It went to Mars. Soap caught on immediately. It was snapped up as fast as it arrived. But several questions popped into the minds of the Mafia soap salesman. Where was it all going? A Martian, in line for a bar in the evening, was back again the following morning for another one. And why did the Martians stay just as dirty as ever? The answer was, the Martians stayed as dirty as ever because they weren't using the soap to wash with. They were eating it! It cured the hangover from sugar. Another group cornered the undertaking business, adding a twist that made for more activity. They added a Department of Elimination. The men in charge of this end of the business circulate through the chocolate and soap bars, politely inquiring, "Who would you like killed?" Struck with the novelty of the thing, quite a few Martians remember other Martians they are mad at. The going price is one hundred carats of diamonds to kill; which is cheap considering the average laborer earns 10,000 carats a week. Then the boys from the more dignified end of the business drop in at the home of the victim and offer to bury him cheap. Two hundred and fifty carats gets a Martian planted in style. Inasmuch as Martians live underground, burying is done in reverse, by tying a rocket to the tail of the deceased and shooting him out into the stratosphere. VII ONE UNIVERSE CONFIDENTIAL Mars is presently no problem to Earth, and will not be until we have all its gold and the Martians begin asking us for loans. Meanwhile, Lait and Mortimer say let the gangsters and communists have it. We don't want it. We believe Earth would weaken itself if it dissipated its assets on foreign planets. Instead, we should heavily arm our own satellites, which will make us secure from attack by an alien planet or constellation. At the same time, we should build an overwhelming force of space ships capable of delivering lethal blows to the outermost corners of the universe and return without refueling. We have seen the futility of meddling in everyone's business on Earth. Let's not make that mistake in space. We are unalterably opposed to the UP (United Planets) and call upon the governments of Earth not to join that Inter-Solar System boondoggle. We have enough trouble right here. THE APPENDIX CONFIDENTIAL: Blast-off : The equivalent of the take-off of Terran aviation. Space ships blast-off into space. Not to be confused with the report of a sawed-off shot gun. Blasting pit : Place from which a space ship blasts off. Guarded area where the intense heat from the jets melts the ground. Also used for cock-fights. Spacemen : Those who man the space ships. See any comic strip. Hairoscope : A very sensitive instrument for space navigation. The sighting plate thereon is centered around two crossed hairs. Because of the vastness of space, very fine hairs are used. These hairs are obtained from the Glomph-Frog, found only in the heart of the dense Venusian swamps. The hairoscope is a must in space navigation. Then how did they get to Venus to get the hair from the Glomph-Frog? Read Venus Confidential. Multiplanetary agitation : The inter-spacial methods by which the Russians compete for the minds of the Neptunians and the Plutonians and the Gowaniuns. Space suit : The clothing worn by those who go into space. The men are put into modernistic diving suits. The dames wear bras and panties. Grav-plates : A form of magnetic shoe worn by spacemen while standing on the outer hull of a space ship halfway to Mars. Why a spaceman wants to stand on the outer hull of a ship halfway to Mars is not clear. Possibly to win a bet. Space platform : A man-made satellite rotating around Earth between here and the Moon. Scientists say this is a necessary first step to interplanetary travel. Mars Confidential proves the fallacy of this theory. Space Academy : A college where young men are trained to be spacemen. The student body consists mainly of cadets who served apprenticeships as elevator jockeys. Asteroids : Tiny worlds floating around in space, put there no doubt to annoy unwary space ships. Extrapolation : The process by which a science-fiction writer takes an established scientific fact and builds thereon a story that couldn't happen in a million years, but maybe 2,000,000. Science fiction : A genre of escape literature which takes the reader to far-away planets—and usually neglects to bring him back. S.F. : An abbreviation for science fiction. Bem : A word derived by using the first letters of the three words: Bug Eyed Monster. Bems are ghastly looking creatures in general. In science-fiction yarns written by Terrans, bems are natives of Mars. In science-fiction yarns written by Martians, bems are natives of Terra. The pile : The source from which power is derived to carry men to the stars. Optional on the more expensive space ships, at extra cost. Atom blaster : A gun carried by spacemen which will melt people down to a cinder. A .45 would do just as well, but then there's the Sullivan Act. Orbit : The path of any heavenly body. The bodies are held in these orbits by natural laws the Republicans are thinking of repealing. Nova : The explosive stage into which planets may pass. According to the finest scientific thinking, a planet will either nova, or it won't. Galaxy : A term used to confuse people who have always called it The Milky Way. Sun spots : Vast electrical storms on the sun which interfere with radio reception, said interference being advantageous during political campaigns. Atomic cannons : Things that go zap . Audio screen : Television without Milton Berle or wrestling. Disintegrating ray : Something you can't see that turns something you can see into something you can't see. Geiger counter : Something used to count Geigers. Interstellar space : Too much nothing at all, filled with rockets, flying saucers, advanced civilizations, and discarded copies of Amazing Stories . Mars : A candy bar. Pluto : A kind of water. Ray guns : Small things that go zap . Time machine : A machine that carries you back to yesterday and into next year. Also, an alarm clock. Time warp : The hole in time the time machine goes through to reach another time. A hole in nothing. Terra : Another name for Earth. It comes from terra firma or something like that. Hyperdrive : The motor that is used to drive a space ship faster than the speed of light. Invented by science-fiction writers but not yet patented. Ether : The upper reaches of space and whatever fills them. Also, an anaesthetic. Luna : Another name for the Moon. Formerly a park in Coney Island.

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THE NON-ELECTRONIC BUG By E. MITTLEMAN There couldn't be a better tip-off system than mine—it wasn't possible—but he had one! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I wouldn't take five cents off a legitimate man, but if they want to gamble that's another story. What I am is a genius, and I give you a piece of advice: Do not ever play cards with a stranger. The stranger might be me. Where there are degenerate card players around, I sometimes get a call. Not dice—I don't have a machine to handle them. But with cards I have a machine to force the advantage. The first thing is a little radio receiver, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. You don't hear any music. You feel it on your skin. The next thing is two dimes. You stick them onto you, anywhere you like. Some like to put them on their legs, some on their belly. Makes no difference, just so they're out of sight. Each dime has a wire soldered to it, and the wires are attached to the little receiver that goes in your pocket. The other thing is the transmitter I carry around. My partner was a fellow named Henry. He had an electronic surplus hardware business, but business wasn't good and he was looking for a little extra cash on the side. It turns out that the other little wholesalers in the loft building where he has his business are all card players, and no pikers, either. So Henry spread the word that he was available for a gin game—any time at all, but he would only play in his own place—he was expecting an important phone call and he didn't want to be away and maybe miss it.... It never came; but the card players did. I was supposed to be his stock clerk. While Henry and the other fellow were working on the cards at one end of the room, I would be moving around the other—checking the stock, packing the stuff for shipment, arranging it on the shelves, sweeping the floor. I was a regular model worker, busy every second. I had to be. In order to see the man's hand I had to be nearby, but I had to keep moving so he wouldn't pay attention to me. And every time I got a look at his hand, I pushed the little button on the transmitter in my pocket. Every push on the button was a shock on Henry's leg. One for spades, two for hearts, three for diamonds, four for clubs. Then I would tip the card: a short shock for an ace, two for a king, three for a queen, and so on down to the ten. A long and a short for nine, a long and two shorts for an eight ... it took a little memorizing, but it was worth it. Henry knew every card the other man held every time. And I got fifty per cent. We didn't annihilate the fish. They hardly felt they were being hurt, but we got a steady advantage, day after day. We did so well we took on another man—I can take physical labor or leave it alone, and I leave it alone every chance I get. That was where we first felt the trouble. Our new boy was around twenty. He had a swept-wing haircut, complete with tail fins. Also he had a silly laugh. Now, there are jokes in a card game—somebody taking a beating will sound off, to take away some of the sting, but nobody laughs because the cracks are never funny. But they were to our new boy. He laughed. He laughed not only when the mark made some crack, but a lot of the time when he didn't. It got so the customers were looking at him with a lot of dislike, and that was bad for business. So I called him out into the hall. "Skippy," I said—that's what we called him, "lay off. Never rub it in to a sucker. It's enough to take his money." He ran his fingers back along his hair. "Can't a fellow express himself?" I gave him a long, hard unhealthy look. Express himself? He wouldn't have to. I'd express him myself—express him right out of our setup. But before I got a chance, this fellow from Chicago came in, a big manufacturer named Chapo; a wheel, and he looked it. He was red-faced, with hanging jowls and a big dollar cigar; he announced that he only played for big stakes ... and, nodding toward the kid and me, that he didn't like an audience. Henry looked at us miserably. But what was he going to do? If he didn't go along, the word could spread that maybe there was something wrong going on. He had to play. "Take the day off, you two," he said, but he wasn't happy. I thought fast. There was still one chance. I got behind Chapo long enough to give Henry a wink and a nod toward the window. Then I took Skippy by the elbow and steered him out of there. Down in the street I said, fast: "You want to earn your pay? You have to give me a hand—an eye is really what I mean. Don't argue—just say yes or no." He didn't stop to think. "Sure," he said. "Why not?" "All right." I took him down the street to where they had genuine imported Japanese field glasses and laid out twenty bucks for a pair. The man was a thief, but I didn't have time to argue. Right across the street from Henry's place was a rundown hotel. That was our next stop. The desk man in the scratch house looked up from his comic book. "A room," I said. "Me and my nephew want a room facing the street." And I pointed to the window of Henry's place, where I wanted it to face. Because we still had a chance. With the field glasses and Skippy's young, good eyes to look through them, with the transmitter that would carry an extra hundred yards easy enough—with everything going for us, we had a chance. Provided Henry had been able to maneuver Chapo so his back was to the window. The bed merchant gave us a long stall about how the only room we wanted belonged to a sweet old lady that was sick and couldn't be moved. But for ten bucks she could be. All the time I was wondering how many hands were being played, if we were stuck money and how much—all kinds of things. But finally we got into the room and I laid it out for Skippy. "You aim those field glasses out the window," I told him. "Read Chapo's cards and let me know; that's all. I'll take care of the rest." I'll say this for him, duck-tail haircut and all, he settled right down to business. I made myself comfortable on the bed and rattled them off on the transmitter as he read the cards to me. I couldn't see the players, didn't know the score; but if he was giving the cards to me right, I was getting them out to Henry. I felt pretty good. I even began to feel kindly toward the kid. At my age, bifocals are standard equipment, but to judge from Skippy's fast, sure call of the cards, his eyesight was twenty-twenty or better. After about an hour, Skippy put down the glasses and broke the news: the game was over. We took our time getting back to Henry's place, so Chapo would have time to clear out. Henry greeted us with eight fingers in the air. Eight hundred? But before I could ask him, he was already talking: "Eight big ones! Eight thousand bucks! And how you did it, I'll never know!" Well, eight thousand was good news, no doubt of that. I said, "That's the old system, Henry. But we couldn't have done it if you hadn't steered the fish up to the window." And I showed him the Japanese field glasses, grinning. But he didn't grin back. He looked puzzled. He glanced toward the window. I looked too, and then I saw what he was puzzled about. It was pretty obvious that Henry had missed my signal. He and the fish had played by the window, all right. But the shade was down. When I turned around to look for Skippy, to ask him some questions, he was gone. Evidently he didn't want to answer. I beat up and down every block in the neighborhood until I spotted him in a beanery, drinking a cup of coffee and looking worried. I sat down beside him, quiet. He didn't look around. The counterman opened his mouth to say hello. I shook my head, but Skippy said, "That's all right. I know you're there." I blinked. This was a creep! But I had to find out what was going on. I said, "You made a mistake, kid." "Running out?" He shrugged. "It's not the first mistake I made," he said bitterly. "Getting into your little setup with the bugged game came before that." I said, "You can always quit," but then stopped. Because it was a lie. He couldn't quit—not until I found out how he read Chapo's cards through a drawn shade. He said drearily, "You've all got me marked lousy, haven't you? Don't kid me about Henry—I know. I'm not so sure about you, but it wouldn't surprise me." "What are you talking about?" "I can hear every word that's on Henry's mind," he said somberly. "You, no. Some people I can hear, some I can't; you're one I can't." "What kind of goofy talk is that?" I demanded. But, to tell you the truth, I didn't think it was so goofy. The window shade was a lot goofier. "All my life," said Skippy, "I've been hearing the voices. It doesn't matter if they talk out loud or not. Most people I can hear, even when they don't want me to. Field glasses? I didn't need field glasses. I could hear every thought that went through Chapo's mind, clear across the street. Henry too. That's how I know." He hesitated, looking at me. "You think Henry took eight thousand off Chapo, don't you? It was ten." I said, "Prove it." The kid finished his coffee. "Well," he said, "you want to know what the counterman's got on his mind?" He leaned over and whispered to me. I yelled, "That's a lousy thing to say!" Everybody was looking at us. He said softly, "You see what it's like? I don't want to hear all this stuff! You think the counterman's got a bad mind, you ought to listen in on Henry's." He looked along the stools. "See that fat little woman down at the end? She's going to order another cheese Danish." He hadn't even finished talking when the woman was calling the counterman, and she got another cheese Danish. I thought it over. What he said about Henry holding out on me made it real serious. I had to have more proof. But I didn't like Skippy's idea of proof. He offered to call off what everybody in the beanery was going to do next, barring three or four he said were silent, like me. That wasn't good enough. "Come along with me," I told him, and we took off for Jake's spot. That's a twenty-four-hour place and the doorman knows me. I knew Jake and I knew his roulette wheel was gaffed. I walked right up to the wheel, and whispered to the kid, "Can you read the dealer?" He smiled and nodded. "All right. Call black or red." The wheel spun, but that didn't stop the betting. Jake's hungry. In his place you can still bet for a few seconds after the wheel starts turning. "Black," Skippy said. I threw down fifty bucks. Black it was. That rattled me. "Call again," I said. When Skippy said black, I put the fifty on red. Black won it. "Let's go," I said, and led the kid out of there. He was looking puzzled. "How come—" "How come I played to lose?" I patted his shoulder. "Sonny, you got a lot to learn. Jake's is no fair game. This was only a dry run." Then I got rid of him, because I had something to do. Henry came across. He even looked embarrassed. "I figured," he said, "uh, I figured that the expenses—" "Save it," I told him. "All I want is my split." He handed it over, but I kept my hand out, waiting. After a minute he got the idea. He reached down inside the waistband of his pants, pulled loose the tape that held the dimes to his skin and handed over the radio receiver. "That's it, huh?" he said. "That's it." "Take your best shot," he said glumly. "But mark my words. You're not going to make out on your own." "I won't be on my own," I told him, and left him then. By myself? Not a chance! It was going to be Skippy and me, all the way. Not only could he read minds, but the capper was that he couldn't read mine! Otherwise, you can understand, I might not want him around all the time. But this way I had my own personal bug in every game in town, and I didn't even have to spend for batteries. Card games, gaffed wheels, everything. Down at the track he could follow the smart-money guys around and let me know what they knew, which was plenty. We could even go up against the legit games in Nevada, with no worry about bluffs. And think of the fringe benefits! With Skippy giving the women a preliminary screening, I could save a lot of wasted time. At my age, time is nothing to be wasted. I could understand a lot about Skippy now—why he didn't like most people, why he laughed at jokes nobody else thought were funny, or even could hear. But everybody has got to like somebody, and I had the edge over most of the human race. He didn't know what I was thinking. And then, take away the voices in his head, and Skippy didn't have much left. He wasn't very smart. If he had half as much in the way of brains as he did in the way of private radar, he would have figured all these angles out for himself long ago. No, he needed me. And I needed him. We were all set to make a big score together, so I went back to his rooming house where I'd told him to wait, to get going on the big time. However, Henry had more brains than Skippy. I hadn't told Henry who tipped me off, but it didn't take him long to work out. After all, I had told him I was going out to look for Skippy, and I came right back and called him for holding out. No, it didn't take much brains. All he had to do was come around to Skippy's place and give him a little lesson about talking. So when I walked in the door, Skippy was there, but he was out cold, with lumps on his forehead and a stupid grin on his face. I woke him up and he recognized me. But you don't make your TV set play better by kicking it. You don't help a fine Swiss watch by pounding it on an anvil. Skippy could walk and talk all right, but something was missing. "The voices!" he yelled, sitting up on the edge of the bed. I got a quick attack of cold fear. "Skippy! What's the matter? Don't you hear them any more?" He looked at me in a panic. "Oh, I hear them all right. But they're all different now. I mean—it isn't English any more. In fact, it isn't any language at all!" Like I say, I'm a genius. Skippy wouldn't lie to me; he's not smart enough. If he says he hears voices, he hears voices. Being a genius, my theory is that when Henry worked Skippy over, he jarred his tuning strips, or whatever it is, so now Skippy's receiving on another frequency. Make sense? I'm positive about it. He sticks to the same story, telling me about what he's hearing inside his head, and he's too stupid to make it all up. There are some parts of it I don't have all figured out yet, but I'll get them. Like what he tells me about the people—I guess they're people—whose voices he hears. They're skinny and furry and very religious. He can't understand their language, but he gets pictures from them, and he told me what he saw. They worship the Moon, he says. Only that's wrong too, because he says they worship two moons, and everybody knows there's only one. But I'll figure it out; I have to, because I have to get Skippy back in business. Meanwhile it's pretty lonesome. I spend a lot of time down around the old neighborhood, but I haven't set up another partner for taking the card players. That seems like pretty small stuff now. And I don't talk to Henry when I see him. And I never go in the beanery when that counterman is on duty. I've got enough troubles in the world; I don't have to add to them by associating with his kind.

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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. The history of this materialistic world is highlighted with strange events that scientists and historians, unable to explain logically, have dismissed with such labels as "supernatural," "miracle," etc. But there are those among us whose simple faith can—and often does—alter the scheme of the universe. Even a little child can do it.... to remember charlie by by ... Roger Dee Just a one-eyed dog named Charlie and a crippled boy named Joey—but between them they changed the face of the universe ... perhaps. Inearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him. His wheelchair was parked as usual on the tired strip of carpet grass that separated his mother's trailer from the one Doc Shull and I lived in, but it wasn't exactly where I'd learned to expect it when I rolled in at night from the fishing boats. Usually it was nearer the west end of the strip where Joey could look across the crushed-shell square of the Twin Palms trailer court and the palmetto flats to the Tampa highway beyond. But this time it was pushed back into the shadows away from the court lights. The boy wasn't watching the flats tonight, as he usually did. Instead he was lying back in his chair with his face turned to the sky, staring upward with such absorbed intensity that he didn't even know I was there until I spoke. "Anything wrong, Joey?" I asked. He said, "No, Roy," without taking his eyes off the sky. For a minute I had the prickly feeling you get when you are watching a movie and find that you know just what is going to happen next. You're puzzled and a little spooked until you realize that the reason you can predict the action so exactly is because you've seen the same thing happen somewhere else a long time ago. I forgot the feeling when I remembered why the kid wasn't watching the palmetto flats. But I couldn't help wondering why he'd turned to watching the sky instead. "What're you looking for up there, Joey?" I asked. He didn't move and from the tone of his voice I got the impression that he only half heard me. "I'm moving some stars," he said softly. I gave it up and went on to my own trailer without asking any more fool questions. How can you talk to a kid like that? Doc Shull wasn't in, but for once I didn't worry about him. I was trying to remember just what it was about my stumbling over Joey's wheelchair that had given me that screwy double-exposure feeling of familiarity. I got a can of beer out of the ice-box because I think better with something cold in my hand, and by the time I had finished the beer I had my answer. The business I'd gone through with Joey outside was familiar because it had happened before, about six weeks back when Doc and I first parked our trailer at the Twin Palms court. I'd nearly stumbled over Joey that time too, but he wasn't moving stars then. He was just staring ahead of him, waiting. He'd been sitting in his wheelchair at the west end of the carpet-grass strip, staring out over the palmetto flats toward the highway. He was practically holding his breath, as if he was waiting for somebody special to show up, so absorbed in his watching that he didn't know I was there until I spoke. He reminded me a little of a ventriloquist's dummy with his skinny, knob-kneed body, thin face and round, still eyes. Only there wasn't anything comical about him the way there is about a dummy. Maybe that's why I spoke, because he looked so deadly serious. "Anything wrong, kid?" I asked. He didn't jump or look up. His voice placed him as a cracker, either south Georgian or native Floridian. "I'm waiting for Charlie to come home," he said, keeping his eyes on the highway. Probably I'd have asked who Charlie was but just then the trailer door opened behind him and his mother took over. I couldn't see her too well because the lights were off inside the trailer. But I could tell from the way she filled up the doorway that she was big. I could make out the white blur of a cigarette in her mouth, and when she struck a match to light it—on her thumb-nail, like a man—I saw that she was fairly young and not bad-looking in a tough, sullen sort of way. The wind was blowing in my direction and it told me she'd had a drink recently, gin, by the smell of it. "This is none of your business, mister," she said. Her voice was Southern like the boy's but with all the softness ground out of it from living on the Florida coast where you hear a hundred different accents every day. "Let the boy alone." She was right about it being none of my business. I went on into the trailer I shared with Doc Shull and left the two of them waiting for Charlie together. Our trailer was dark inside, which meant first that Doc had probably gone out looking for a drink as soon as I left that morning to pick up a job, and second that he'd probably got too tight to find his way back. But I was wrong on at least one count, because when I switched on the light and dumped the packages I'd brought on the sink cabinet I saw Doc asleep in his bunk. He'd had a drink, though. I could smell it on him when I shook him awake, and it smelled like gin. Doc sat up and blinked against the light, a thin, elderly little man with bright blue eyes, a clipped brown mustache and scanty brown hair tousled and wild from sleep. He was stripped to his shorts against the heat, but at some time during the day he had bathed and shaved. He had even washed and ironed a shirt; it hung on a nail over his bunk with a crumpled pack of cigarettes in the pocket. "Crawl out and cook supper, Rip," I said, holding him to his end of our working agreement. "I've made a day and I'm hungry." Doc got up and stepped into his pants. He padded barefoot across the linoleum and poked at the packages on the sink cabinet. "Snapper steak again," he complained. "Roy, I'm sick of fish!" "You don't catch sirloins with a hand-line," I told him. And because I'd never been able to stay sore at him for long I added, "But we got beer. Where's the opener?" "I'm sick of beer, too," Doc said. "I need a real drink." I sniffed the air, making a business of it. "You've had one already. Where?" He grinned at me then with the wise-to-himself-and-the-world grin that lit up his face like turning on a light inside and made him different from anybody else on earth. "The largess of Providence," he said, "is bestowed impartially upon sot and Samaritan. I helped the little fellow next door to the bathroom this afternoon while his mother was away at work, and my selflessness had its just reward." Sometimes it's hard to tell when Doc is kidding. He's an educated man—used to teach at some Northern college, he said once, and I never doubted it—and talks like one when he wants to. But Doc's no bum, though he's a semi-alcoholic and lets me support him like an invalid uncle, and he's keen enough to read my mind like a racing form. "No, I didn't batter down the cupboard and help myself," he said. "The lady—her name is Mrs. Ethel Pond—gave me the drink. Why else do you suppose I'd launder a shirt?" That was like Doc. He hadn't touched her bottle though his insides were probably snarled up like barbed wire for the want of it. He'd shaved and pressed a shirt instead so he'd look decent enough to rate a shot of gin she'd offer him as a reward. It wasn't such a doubtful gamble at that, because Doc has a way with him when he bothers to use it; maybe that's why he bums around with me after the commercial fishing and migratory crop work, because he's used that charm too often in the wrong places. "Good enough," I said and punctured a can of beer apiece for us while Doc put the snapper steaks to cook. He told me more about our neighbors while we killed the beer. The Ponds were permanent residents. The kid—his name was Joey and he was ten—was a polio case who hadn't walked for over a year, and his mother was a waitress at a roadside joint named the Sea Shell Diner. There wasn't any Mr. Pond. I guessed there never had been, which would explain why Ethel acted so tough and sullen. We were halfway through supper when I remembered something the kid had said. "Who's Charlie?" I asked. Doc frowned at his plate. "The kid had a dog named Charlie, a big shaggy mutt with only one eye and no love for anybody but the boy. The dog isn't coming home. He was run down by a car on the highway while Joey was hospitalized with polio." "Tough," I said, thinking of the kid sitting out there all day in his wheelchair, straining his eyes across the palmetto flats. "You mean he's been waiting a year ?" Doc nodded, seemed to lose interest in the Ponds, so I let the subject drop. We sat around after supper and polished off the rest of the beer. When we turned in around midnight I figured we wouldn't be staying long at the Twin Palms trailer court. It wasn't a very comfortable place. I was wrong there. It wasn't comfortable, but we stayed. I couldn't have said at first why we stuck, and if Doc could he didn't volunteer. Neither of us talked about it. We just went on living the way we were used to living, a few weeks here and a few there, all over the States. We'd hit the Florida west coast too late for the citrus season, so I went in for the fishing instead. I worked the fishing boats all the way from Tampa down to Fort Myers, not signing on with any of the commercial companies because I like to move quick when I get restless. I picked the independent deep-water snapper runs mostly, because the percentage is good there if you've got a strong back and tough hands. Snapper fishing isn't the sport it seems to the one-day tourists who flock along because the fee is cheap. You fish from a wide-beamed old scow, usually, with hand-lines instead of regular tackle, and you use multiple hooks that go down to the bottom where the big red ones are. There's no real thrill to it, as the one-day anglers find out quickly. A snapper puts up no more fight than a catfish and the biggest job is to haul out his dead weight once you've got him surfaced. Usually a pro like me sells his catch to the boat's owner or to some clumsy sport who wants his picture shot with a big one, and there's nearly always a jackpot—from a pool made up at the beginning of every run—for the man landing the biggest fish of the day. There's a knack to hooking the big ones, and when the jackpots were running good I only worked a day or so a week and spent the rest of the time lying around the trailer playing cribbage and drinking beer with Doc Shull. Usually it was the life of Riley, but somehow it wasn't enough in this place. We'd get about half-oiled and work up a promising argument about what was wrong with the world. Then, just when we'd got life looking its screwball funniest with our arguments one or the other of us would look out the window and see Joey Pond in his wheelchair, waiting for a one-eyed dog named Charlie to come trotting home across the palmetto flats. He was always there, day or night, until his mother came home from work and rolled him inside. It wasn't right or natural for a kid to wait like that for anything and it worried me. I even offered once to buy the kid another mutt but Ethel Pond told me quick to mind my own business. Doc explained that the kid didn't want another mutt because he had what Doc called a psychological block. "Charlie was more than just a dog to him," Doc said. "He was a sort of symbol because he offered the kid two things that no one else in the world could—security and independence. With Charlie keeping him company he felt secure, and he was independent of the kids who could run and play because he had Charlie to play with. If he took another dog now he'd be giving up more than Charlie. He'd be giving up everything that Charlie had meant to him, then there wouldn't be any point in living." I could see it when Doc put it that way. The dog had spent more time with Joey than Ethel had, and the kid felt as safe with him as he'd have been with a platoon of Marines. And Charlie, being a one-man dog, had depended on Joey for the affection he wouldn't take from anybody else. The dog needed Joey and Joey needed him. Together, they'd been a natural. At first I thought it was funny that Joey never complained or cried when Charlie didn't come home, but Doc explained that it was all a part of this psychological block business. If Joey cried he'd be admitting that Charlie was lost. So he waited and watched, secure in his belief that Charlie would return. The Ponds got used to Doc and me being around, but they never got what you'd call intimate. Joey would laugh at some of the droll things Doc said, but his eyes always went back to the palmetto flats and the highway, looking for Charlie. And he never let anything interfere with his routine. That routine started every morning when old man Cloehessey, the postman, pedaled his bicycle out from Twin Palms to leave a handful of mail for the trailer-court tenants. Cloehessey would always make it a point to ride back by way of the Pond trailer and Joey would stop him and ask if he's seen anything of a one-eyed dog on his route that day. Old Cloehessey would lean on his bike and take off his sun helmet and mop his bald scalp, scowling while he pretended to think. Then he'd say, "Not today, Joey," or, "Thought so yesterday, but this fellow had two eyes on him. 'Twasn't Charlie." Then he'd pedal away, shaking his head. Later on the handyman would come around to swap sanitary tanks under the trailers and Joey would ask him the same question. Once a month the power company sent out a man to read the electric meters and he was part of Joey's routine too. It was hard on Ethel. Sometimes the kid would dream at night that Charlie had come home and was scratching at the trailer ramp to be let in, and he'd wake Ethel and beg her to go out and see. When that happened Doc and I could hear Ethel talking to him, low and steady, until all hours of the morning, and when he finally went back to sleep we'd hear her open the cupboard and take out the gin bottle. But there came a night that was more than Ethel could take, a night that changed Joey's routine and a lot more with it. It left a mark you've seen yourself—everybody has that's got eyes to see—though you never knew what made it. Nobody ever knew that but Joey and Ethel Pond and Doc and me. Doc and I were turning in around midnight that night when the kid sang out next door. We heard Ethel get up and go to him, and we got up too and opened a beer because we knew neither of us would sleep any more till she got Joey quiet again. But this night was different. Ethel hadn't talked to the kid long when he yelled, "Charlie! Charlie! " and after that we heard both of them bawling. A little later Ethel came out into the moonlight and shut the trailer door behind her. She looked rumpled and beaten, her hair straggling damply on her shoulders and her eyes puffed and red from crying. The gin she'd had hadn't helped any either. She stood for a while without moving, then she looked up at the sky and said something I'm not likely to forget. "Why couldn't You give the kid a break?" she said, not railing or anything but loud enough for us to hear. "You, up there—what's another lousy one-eyed mutt to You?" Doc and I looked at each other in the half-dark of our own trailer. "She's done it, Roy," Doc said. I knew what he meant and wished I didn't. Ethel had finally told the kid that Charlie wasn't coming back, not ever. That's why I was worried about Joey when I came home the next evening and found him watching the sky instead of the palmetto flats. It meant he'd given up waiting for Charlie. And the quiet way the kid spoke of moving the stars around worried me more, because it sounded outright crazy. Not that you could blame him for going off his head. It was tough enough to be pinned to a wheelchair without being able to wiggle so much as a toe. But to lose his dog in the bargain.... I was on my third beer when Doc Shull rolled in with a big package under his arm. Doc was stone sober, which surprised me, and he was hot and tired from a shopping trip to Tampa, which surprised me more. It was when he ripped the paper off his package, though, that I thought he'd lost his mind. "Books for Joey," Doc said. "Ethel and I agreed this morning that the boy needs another interest to occupy his time now, and since he can't go to school I'm going to teach him here." He went on to explain that Ethel hadn't had the heart the night before, desperate as she was, to tell the kid the whole truth. She'd told him instead, quoting an imaginary customer at the Sea Shell Diner, that a tourist car with Michigan license plates had picked Charlie up on the highway and taken him away. It was a good enough story. Joey still didn't know that Charlie was dead, but his waiting was over because no dog could be expected to find his way home from Michigan. "We've got to give the boy another interest," Doc said, putting away the books and puncturing another beer can. "Joey has a remarkable talent for concentration—most handicapped children have—that could be the end of him if it isn't diverted into safe channels." I thought the kid had cracked up already and said so. "Moving stars ?" Doc said when I told him. "Good Lord, Roy—" Ethel Pond knocked just then, interrupting him. She came in and had a beer with us and talked to Doc about his plan for educating Joey at home. But she couldn't tell us anything more about the kid's new fixation than we already knew. When she asked him why he stared up at the sky like that he'd say only that he wants something to remember Charlie by. It was about nine o'clock, when Ethel went home to cook supper. Doc and I knocked off our cribbage game and went outside with our folding chairs to get some air. It was then that the first star moved. It moved all of a sudden, the way any shooting star does, and shot across the sky in a curving, blue-white streak of fire. I didn't pay much attention, but Doc nearly choked on his beer. "Roy," he said, "that was Sirius! It moved! " I didn't see anything serious about it and said so. You can see a dozen or so stars zip across the sky on any clear night if you're in the mood to look up. "Not serious, you fool," Doc said. "The star Sirius—the Dog Star, it's called—it moved a good sixty degrees, then stopped dead !" I sat up and took notice then, partly because the star really had stopped instead of burning out the way a falling star seems to do, partly because anything that excites Doc Shull that much is something to think about. We watched the star like two cats at a mouse-hole, but it didn't move again. After a while a smaller one did, though, and later in the night a whole procession of them streaked across the sky and fell into place around the first one, forming a pattern that didn't make any sense to us. They stopped moving around midnight and we went to bed, but neither of us got to sleep right away. "Maybe we ought to look for another interest in life ourselves instead of drumming up one for Joey," Doc said. He meant it as a joke but it had a shaky sound; "Something besides getting beered up every night, for instance." "You think we've got the d.t.'s from drinking beer ?" I asked. Doc laughed at that, sounding more like his old self. "No, Roy. No two people ever had instantaneous and identical hallucinations." "Look," I said. "I know this sounds crazy but maybe Joey—" Doc wasn't amused any more. "Don't be a fool, Roy. If those stars really moved you can be sure of two things—Joey had nothing to do with it, and the papers will explain everything tomorrow." He was wrong on one count at least. The papers next day were packed with scareheads three inches high but none of them explained anything. The radio commentators quoted every authority they could reach, and astronomers were going crazy everywhere. It just couldn't happen, they said. Doc and I went over the news column by column that night and I learned more about the stars than I'd learned in a lifetime. Doc, as I've said before, is an educated man, and what he couldn't recall offhand about astronomy the newspapers quoted by chapter and verse. They ran interviews with astronomers at Harvard Observatory and Mount Wilson and Lick and Flagstaff and God knows where else, but nobody could explain why all of those stars would change position then stop. It set me back on my heels to learn that Sirius was twice as big as the Sun and more than twice as heavy, that it was three times as hot and had a little dark companion that was more solid than lead but didn't give off enough light to be seen with the naked eye. This little companion—astronomers called it the "Pup" because Sirius was the Dog Star—hadn't moved, which puzzled the astronomers no end. I suggested to Doc, only half joking, that maybe the Pup had stayed put because it wasn't bright enough to suit Joey's taste, but Doc called me down sharp. "Don't joke about Joey," he said sternly. "Getting back to Sirius—it's so far away that its light needs eight and a half years to reach us. That means it started moving when Joey was only eighteen months old. The speed of light is a universal constant, Roy, and astronomers say it can't be changed." "They said the stars couldn't be tossed around like pool balls, too," I pointed out. "I'm not saying that Joey really moved those damn stars, Doc, but if he did he could have moved the light along with them, couldn't he?" But Doc wouldn't argue the point. "I'm going out for air," he said. I trailed along, but we didn't get farther than Joey's wheelchair. There he sat, tense and absorbed, staring up at the night sky. Doc and I followed his gaze, the way you do automatically when somebody on the street ahead of you cranes his neck at something. We looked up just in time to see the stars start moving again. The first one to go was a big white one that slanted across the sky like a Roman candle fireball— zip , like that—and stopped dead beside the group that had collected around Sirius. Doc said, "There went Altair," and his voice sounded like he had just run a mile. That was only the beginning. During the next hour forty or fifty more stars flashed across the sky and joined the group that had moved the night before. The pattern they made still didn't look like anything in particular. I left Doc shaking his head at the sky and went over to give Joey, who had called it a night and was hand-rolling his wheelchair toward the Pond trailer, a boost up the entrance ramp. I pushed him inside where Doc couldn't hear, then I asked him how things were going. "Slow, Roy," he said. "I've got 'most a hundred to go, yet." "Then you're really moving those stars up there?" He looked surprised. "Sure, it's not so hard once you know how." The odds were even that he was pulling my leg, but I went ahead anyway and asked another question. "I can't make head or tail of it, Joey," I said. "What're you making up there?" He gave me a very small smile. "You'll know when I'm through," he said. I told Doc about that after we'd bunked in, but he said I should not encourage the kid in his crazy thinking. "Joey's heard everybody talking about those stars moving, the radio newscasters blared about it, so he's excited too. But he's got a lot more imagination than most people, because he's a cripple, and he could go off on a crazy tangent because he's upset about Charlie. The thing to do is give him a logical explanation instead of letting him think his fantasy is a fact." Doc was taking all this so hard—because it was upsetting things he'd taken for granted as being facts all his life, like those astronomers who were going nuts in droves all over the world. I didn't realize how upset Doc really was, though, till he woke me up at about 4:00 a.m. "I can't sleep for thinking about those stars," he said, sitting on the edge of my bunk. "Roy, I'm scared ." That from Doc was something I'd never expected to hear. It startled me wide enough awake to sit up in the dark and listen while he unloaded his worries. "I'm afraid," Doc said, "because what is happening up there isn't right or natural. It just can't be, yet it is." It was so quiet when he paused that I could hear the blood swishing in my ears. Finally Doc said, "Roy, the galaxy we live in is as delicately balanced as a fine watch. If that balance is upset too far our world will be affected drastically." Ordinarily I wouldn't have argued with Doc on his own ground, but I could see he was painting a mental picture of the whole universe crashing together like a Fourth of July fireworks display and I was afraid to let him go on. "The trouble with you educated people," I said, "is that you think your experts have got everything figured out, that there's nothing in the world their slide-rules can't pin down. Well, I'm an illiterate mugg, but I know that your astronomers can measure the stars till they're blue in the face and they'll never learn who put those stars there. So how do they know that whoever put them there won't move them again? I've always heard that if a man had faith enough he could move mountains. Well, if a man has the faith in himself that Joey's got maybe he could move stars, too." Doc sat quiet for a minute. "' There are more things, Horatio.... '" he began, then laughed. "A line worn threadbare by three hundred years of repetition but as apt tonight as ever, Roy. Do you really believe Joey is moving those stars?" "Why not?" I came back. "It's as good an answer as any the experts have come up with." Doc got up and went back to his own bunk. "Maybe you're right. We'll find out tomorrow." And we did. Doc did, rather, while I was hard at work hauling red snappers up from the bottom of the Gulf. I got home a little earlier than usual that night, just before it got really dark. Joey was sitting as usual all alone in his wheelchair. In the gloom I could see a stack of books on the grass beside him, books Doc had given him to study. The thing that stopped me was that Joey was staring at his feet as if they were the first ones he'd ever seen, and he had the same look of intense concentration on his face that I'd seen when he was watching the stars. I didn't know what to say to him, thinking maybe I'd better not mention the stars. But Joey spoke first. "Roy," he said, without taking his eyes off his toes, "did you know that Doc is an awfully wise man?" I said I'd always thought so, but why? "Doc said this morning that I ought not to move any more stars," the kid said. "He says I ought to concentrate instead on learning how to walk again so I can go to Michigan and find Charlie." For a minute I was mad enough to brain Doc Shull if he'd been handy. Anybody that would pull a gag like that on a crippled, helpless kid.... "Doc says that if I can do what I've been doing to the stars then it ought to be easy to move my own feet," Joey said. "And he's right, Roy. So I'm not going to move any more stars. I'm going to move my feet." He looked up at me with his small, solemn smile. "It took me a whole day to learn how to move that first star, Roy, but I could do this after only a couple of hours. Look...." And he wiggled the toes on both feet. It's a pity things don't happen in life like they do in books, because a first-class story could be made out of Joey Pond's knack for moving things by looking at them. In a book Joey might have saved the world or destroyed it, depending on which line would interest the most readers and bring the writer the fattest check, but of course it didn't really turn out either way. It ended in what Doc Shull called an anticlimax, leaving everybody happy enough except a few astronomers who like mysteries anyway or they wouldn't be astronomers in the first place. The stars that had been moved stayed where they were, but the pattern they had started was never finished. That unfinished pattern won't ever go away, in case you've wondered about it—it's up there in the sky where you can see it any clear night—but it will never be finished because Joey Pond lost interest in it when he learned to walk again. Walking was a slow business with Joey at first because his legs had got thin and weak—partially atrophied muscles, Doc said—and it took time to make them round and strong again. But in a couple of weeks he was stumping around on crutches and after that he never went near his wheelchair again. Ethel sent him to school at Sarasota by bus and before summer vacation time came around he was playing softball and fishing in the Gulf with a gang of other kids on Sundays. School opened up a whole new world to Joey and he fitted himself into the routine as neat as if he'd been doing it all his life. He learned a lot there and he forgot a lot that he'd learned for himself by being alone. Before we realized what was happening he was just like any other ten-year-old, full of curiosity and the devil, with no more power to move things by staring at them than anybody else had. I think he actually forgot about those stars along with other things that had meant so much to him when he was tied to his wheelchair and couldn't do anything but wait and think. For instance, a scrubby little terrier followed him home from Twin Palms one day and Ethel let him keep it. He fed the pup and washed it and named it Dugan, and after that he never said anything more about going to Michigan to find Charlie. It was only natural, of course, because kids—normal kids—forget their pain quickly. It's a sort of defense mechanism, Doc says, against the disappointments of this life. When school opened again in the fall Ethel sold her trailer and got a job in Tampa where Joey could walk to school instead of going by bus. When they were gone the Twin Palms trailer court was so lonesome and dead that Doc and I pulled out and went down to the Lake Okechobee country for the sugar cane season. We never heard from Ethel and Joey again. We've moved several times since; we're out in the San Joaquin Valley just now, with the celery croppers. But everywhere we go we're reminded of them. Every time we look up at a clear night sky we see what Doc calls the Joey Pond Stellar Monument, which is nothing but a funny sort of pattern roughed in with a hundred or so stars of all sizes and colors. The body of it is so sketchy that you'd never make out what it's supposed to be unless you knew already what you were looking for. To us the head of a dog is fairly plain. If you know enough to fill in the gaps you can see it was meant to be a big shaggy dog with only one eye. Doc says that footloose migratories like him and me forget old associations as quick as kids do—and for the same good reason—so I'm not especially interested now in where Ethel and Joey Pond are or how they're doing. But there's one thing I'll always wonder about, now that there's no way of ever knowing for sure. I wish I'd asked Joey or Ethel, before they moved away, how Charlie lost that other eye.

valid

60745

THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT By MARGARET ST. CLAIR Being a wizard missionary to the Free'l needed more than magic—it called for a miracle! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The spell the Free'l were casting ought to have drawn the moon down from the heavens, made water run uphill, and inverted the order of the seasons. But, since they had got broor's blood instead of newt's, were using alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days later than the solstice anyhow, nothing happened. Neeshan watched their antics with a bitter smile. He'd tried hard with them. The Free'l were really a challenge to evangelical wizardry. They had some natural talent for magic, as was evinced by the frequent attempts they made to perform it, and they were interested in what he told them about its capacities. But they simply wouldn't take the trouble to do it right. How long had they been stamping around in their circle, anyhow? Since early moonset, and it was now almost dawn. No doubt they would go on stamping all next day, if not interrupted. It was time to call a halt. Neeshan strode into the middle of the circle. Rhn, the village chief, looked up from his drumming. "Go away," he said. "You'll spoil the charm." "What charm? Can't you see by now, Rhn, that it isn't going to work?" "Of course it will. It just takes time." "Hell it will. Hell it does. Watch." Neeshan pushed Rhn to one side and squatted down in the center of the circle. From the pockets of his black robe he produced stylus, dragon's blood, oil of anointing, and salt. He drew a design on the ground with the stylus, dropped dragon's blood at the corners of the parallelogram, and touched the inner cusps with the oil. Then, sighting carefully at the double red and white sun, which was just coming up, he touched the outer cusps with salt. An intense smoke sprang up. When the smoke died away, a small lizardlike creature was visible in the parallelogram. "Tell the demon what you want," Neeshan ordered the Free'l. The Free'l hesitated. They had few wants, after all, which was one of the things that made teaching them magic difficult. "Two big dyla melons," one of the younger ones said at last. "A new andana necklace," said another. "A tooter like the one you have," said Rhn, who was ambitious. "Straw for a new roof on my hut," said one of the older females. "That's enough for now," Neeshan interrupted. "The demon can't bring you a tooter, Rhn—you have to ask another sort of demon for that. The other things he can get. Sammel, to work!" The lizard in the parallelogram twitched its tail. It disappeared, and returned almost immediately with melons, a handsome necklace, and an enormous heap of straw. "Can I go now?" it asked. "Yes." Neeshan turned to the Free'l, who were sharing the dyla melons out around their circle. "You see? That's how it ought to be. You cast a spell. You're careful with it. And it works. Right away." "When you do it, it works," Rhn answered. "Magic works when anybody does it. But you have to do it right." Rhn raised his mud-plastered shoulders in a shrug. "It's such a lot of dreeze, doing it that way. Magic ought to be fun." He walked away, munching on a slice of the melon the demon had brought. Neeshan stared after him, his eyes hot. "Dreeze" was a Free'l word that referred originally to the nasal drip that accompanied that race's virulent head colds. It had been extended to mean almost anything annoying. The Free'l, who spent much of their time sitting in the rain, had a lot of colds in the head. Wasn't there anything to be done with these people? Even the simplest spell was too dreezish for them to bother with. He was getting a headache. He'd better perform a headache-removing spell. He retired to the hut the Free'l had assigned to him. The spell worked, of course, but it left him feeling soggy and dispirited. He was still standing in the hut, wondering what he should do next, when his big black-and-gold tooter in the corner gave a faint "woof." That meant headquarters wanted to communicate with him. Neeshan carefully aligned the tooter, which is basically a sort of lens for focusing neural force, with the rising double suns. He moved his couch out into a parallel position and lay down on it. In a minute or two he was deep in a cataleptic trance. The message from headquarters was long, circuitous, and couched in the elaborate, ego-caressing ceremonial of high magic, but its gist was clear enough. "Your report received," it boiled down to. "We are glad to hear that you are keeping on with the Free'l. We do not expect you to succeed with them—none of the other magical missionaries we have sent out ever has. But if you should succeed, by any chance, you would get your senior warlock's rating immediately. It would be no exaggeration, in fact, to say that the highest offices in the Brotherhood would be open to you." Neeshan came out of his trance. His eyes were round with wonder and cupidity. His senior warlock's rating—why, he wasn't due to get that for nearly four more six hundred-and-five-day years. And the highest offices in the Brotherhood—that could mean anything. Anything! He hadn't realized the Brotherhood set such store on converting the Free'l. Well, now, a reward like that was worth going to some trouble for. Neeshan sat down on his couch, his elbows on his knees, his fists pressed against his forehead, and tried to think. The Free'l liked magic, but they were lazy. Anything that involved accuracy impressed them as dreezish. And they didn't want anything. That was the biggest difficulty. Magic had nothing to offer them. He had never, Neeshan thought, heard one of the Free'l express a want. Wait, though. There was Rhn. He had shown a definite interest in Neeshan's tooter. Something in its intricate, florid black-and-gold curves seemed to fascinate him. True, he hadn't been interested in it for its legitimate uses, which were to extend and develop a magician's spiritual power. He probably thought that having it would give him more prestige and influence among his people. But for one of the Free'l to say "I wish I had that" about anything whatever meant that he could be worked on. Could the tooter be used as a bribe? Neeshan sighed heavily. Getting a tooter was painful and laborious. A tooter was carefully fitted to an individual magician's personality; in a sense, it was a part of his personality, and if Neeshan let Rhn have his tooter, he would be letting him have a part of himself. But the stakes were enormous. Neeshan got up from his couch. It had begun to rain, but he didn't want to spend time performing a rain-repelling spell. He wanted to find Rhn. Rhn was standing at the edge of the swamp, luxuriating in the downpour. The mud had washed from his shoulders, and he was already sniffling. Neeshan came to the point directly. "I'll give you my tooter," he said, almost choking over the words, "if you'll do a spell—a simple spell, mind you—exactly right." Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt an impulse to kick him. Then he said, "Well...." Neeshan began his instructions. It wouldn't do for him to help Rhn too directly, but he was willing to do everything reasonable. Rhn listened, scratching himself in the armpits and sneezing from time to time. After Neeshan had been through the directions twice, Rhn stopped him. "No, don't bother telling me again—it's just more dreeze. Give me the materials and I'll show you. Don't forget, you're giving me the tooter for this." He started off, Neeshan after him, to the latter's hut. While Neeshan looked on tensely, Rhn began going through the actions Neeshan had told him. Half-way through the first decad, he forgot. He inverted the order of the hand-passes, sprinkled salt on the wrong point, and mispronounced the names in the invocation. When he pulled his hands apart at the end, only a tiny yellow flame sprang up. Neeshan cursed bitterly. Rhn, however, was delighted. "Look at that, will you!" he exclaimed, clapping his chapped, scabby little hands together. "It worked! I'll take the tooter home with me now." "The tooter? For that ? You didn't do the spell right." Rhn stared at him indignantly. "You mean, you're not going to give me the tooter after all the trouble I went to? I only did it as a favor, really. Neeshan, I think it's very mean of you." "Try the spell again." "Oh, dreeze. You're too impatient. You never give anything time to work." He got up and walked off. For the next few days, everybody in the village avoided Neeshan. They all felt sorry for Rhn, who'd worked so hard, done everything he was told to, and been cheated out of his tooter by Neeshan. In the end the magician, cursing his own weakness, surrendered the tooter to Rhn. The accusatory atmosphere in the normally indifferent Free'l was intolerable. But now what was he to do? He'd given up his tooter—he had to ask Rhn to lend it to him when he wanted to contact headquarters—and the senior rating was no nearer than before. His head ached constantly, and all the spells he performed to cure the pain left him feeling wretchedly tired out. Magic, however, is an art of many resources, not all of them savory. Neeshan, in his desperation, began to invoke demons more disreputable than those he would ordinarily have consulted. In effect, he turned for help to the magical underworld. His thuggish informants were none too consistent. One demon told him one thing, another something else. The consensus, though, was that while there was nothing the Free'l actually wanted enough to go to any trouble for it (they didn't even want to get rid of their nasal drip, for example—in a perverse way they were proud of it), there was one thing they disliked intensely—Neeshan himself. The Free'l thought, the demons reported, that he was inconsiderate, tactless, officious, and a crashing bore. They regarded him as the psychological equivalent of the worst case of dreeze ever known, carried to the nth power. They wished he'd drop dead or hang himself. Neeshan dismissed the last of the demons. His eyes had begun to shine. The Free'l thought he was a nuisance, did they? They thought he was the most annoying thing they'd encountered in the course of their racial history? Good. Fine. Splendid. Then he'd really annoy them. He'd have to watch out for poison, of course. But in the end, they'd turn to magic to get rid of him. They'd have to. And then he'd have them. They'd be caught. One act of communal magic that really worked and they'd be sold on magic. He'd be sure of his senior rating. Neeshan began his campaign immediately. Where the Free'l were, there was he. He was always on hand with unwanted explanations, hypercritical objections, and maddening "wouldn't-it-be-betters." Whereas earlier in his evangelical mission he had confined himself to pointing out how much easier magic would make life for the Free'l, he now counciled and advised them on every phase of their daily routine, from mud-smearing to rain-sitting, and from the time they got up until they went to bed. He even pursued them with advice after they got into bed, and told them how to run their sex lives—advice which the Free'l, who set quite as much store by their sex lives as anybody does, resented passionately. But most of all he harped on their folly in putting up with nasal drip, and instructed them over and over again in the details of a charm—a quite simple charm—for getting rid of it. The charm would, he informed them, work equally well against anything— or person —that they found annoying. The food the Free'l brought him began to have a highly peculiar taste. Neeshan grinned and hung a theriacal charm, a first-class antidote to poison, around his neck. The Free'l's distaste for him bothered him, naturally, but he could stand it. When he had repeated the anti-annoyance charm to a group of Free'l last night, he had noticed that Rhn was listening eagerly. It wouldn't be much longer now. On the morning of the day before the equinox, Neeshan was awakened from sleep by an odd prickling sensation in his ears. It was a sensation he'd experienced only once before in his life, during his novitiate, and it took him a moment to identify it. Then he realized what it was. Somebody was casting a spell against him. At last! At last! It had worked! Neeshan put on his robe and hurried to the door of the hut. The day seemed remarkably overcast, almost like night, but that was caused by the spell. This one happened to involve the optic nerves. He began to grope his way cautiously toward the village center. He didn't want the Free'l to see him and get suspicious, but he did want to have the pleasure of seeing them cast their first accurate spell. (He was well protected against wind-damage from it, of course.) When he was almost at the center, he took cover behind a hut. He peered out. They were doing it right . Oh, what a satisfaction! Neeshan felt his chest expand with pride. And when the spell worked, when the big wind swooped down and blew him away, the Free'l would certainly receive a second magical missionary more kindly. Neeshan might even come back, well disguised, himself. The ritual went on. The dancers made three circles to the left, three circles to the right. Cross over, and all sprinkle salt on the interstices of the star Rhn had traced on the ground with the point of a knife. Back to the circle. One to the left, one to right, while Rhn, in the center of the circle, dusted over the salt with—with what ? "Hey!" Neeshan yelled in sudden alarm. "Not brimstone! Watch out! You're not doing it ri—" His chest contracted suddenly, as if a large, stony hand had seized his thorax above the waist. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't even say "Ouch!" It felt as if his chest—no, his whole body—was being compressed in on itself and turning into something as hard as stone. He tried to wave his tiny, heavy arms in a counter-charm; he couldn't even inhale. The last emotion he experienced was one of bitterness. He might have known the Free'l couldn't get anything right. The Free'l take a dim view of the small stone image that now stands in the center of their village. It is much too heavy for them to move, and while it is not nearly so much of a nuisance as Neeshan was when he was alive, it inconveniences them. They have to make a detour around it when they do their magic dances. They still hope, though, that the spells they are casting to get rid of him will work eventually. If he doesn't go away this autumn, he will the autumn after next. They have a good deal of faith in magic, when you come right down to it. And patience is their long suit.

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99905

Going off track Birmingham's airport isn't like other airports. Right at the north-western end of runway 15 there's a country park and a row of benches. You'll see families picnicking here, enjoying the subsonic spectacle of planes from Brussels, Bucharest and Barcelona roaring just feet overhead on their final approach. Birmingham isn't like other British cities – it fetishises the technical and promotes the new. It is unstinting in its thrall to evolution and unsentimental about erasing past versions of the future in its rush to create new ones; the comprehensive 1960s vision of the city which itself swept away a century's Victoriana is currently being meticulously taken apart concrete slab by concrete slab. The city's motto is 'Forward'. When you get to a certain age you realise how much more visions of the future say about the present they're concocted in than the actual future they purport to show us hurtling towards. A track in the air, sitting on top of concrete legs that couldn't look any more like rational new humans striding into a technocratic promised land if they tried, will always evoke a kind of nostalgia for the 20th century. You think of the SAFEGE monorail depicted in Truffaut's 1966 film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451; and of regional news reporters with greasy barnets delivering excited pieces to camera about big plans. Today, on the elevated track that gambols over windswept car parks and threads through cheap motels between Birmingham's airport terminal and the railway station, a simple, ski resort-style people-mover system ferries passengers from plane to train. Three decades ago it was so much more exciting: the world's first commercial maglev, or magnetic levitation, system ran along here. Opened in 1984, the Birmingham Maglev came at the very tail end of a trente glorieuses for British transport technology and, more broadly, European engineering; an era that promised so much yet eventually bequeathed so many relics and ruins. The modernism of the 20th century, expressed especially in architecture and engineering, seemed like nothing less than the founding of a new order. Progress was to be continual, unstoppable and good. Yet today the physical and philosophical advances are being gradually taken apart and retracted, as if we'd woken up sweating and feared we'd somehow overreached ourselves. When the Birmingham Maglev was shuttered in 1995, one of the cars was dumped in a hedge near the A45. Furniture maker and transport enthusiast Andy Jones splashed out a mere £100 for it on eBay in 2011 (although, he says, "it cost me £400 to get it out of the hedge!"). Now it sits in a field behind Jones's house in Burton Green, a couple of miles east of the airport in the rolling Warwickshire countryside. I reminisce to Jones about my boyhood excitement for the Birmingham Maglev, about the silly enthusiasm I felt when I got to go on it in the late 80s. He shared the experience. "I used it in the old days too," he says. "I'd ride backwards and forwards on it, I thought it was smashing." "The problem was, it was the end of one lot of technology. The first time it snowed, all hell broke loose! It had a ratcheting mechanism, a primitive form of winch. Beneath that was the hydraulic system. It was lifted up by the magnetic field (under the [car] are steel sheets). But you'd use the hydraulic system to pull it back up on to the system if it broke." Bob Gwynne, associate curator of collections and research at the National Rail Museum in York, says: "British Rail's Derby Research Centre, founded in 1964, was arguably the world's leading rail research facility when it was in full operation. An understanding of the wheel and rail interface comes from there, as does the first tilting train, a new railbus, high-speed freight wagons, computer-controlled interlocking of track and signal, the first successful maglev and many other things." Gwynne has got the second of the three Birmingham Maglev cars at the museum. The maglev was a development that spun out of this research at Derby, and developed in a joint project with a private consortium that included the now-defunct General Electric Company. The maglev cars were built by Metro Cammell at its factory four miles from the airport in Washwood Heath. It was the same place many tube carriages came from, and if you look down the doors on Piccadilly line carriages as you get on and off, you can see a cheery 1973 plaque reminding travellers of this fact (the cheeky Brummie assumption here being that London commuters always look at the floor). But the British maglev never really took off. Tim Dunn, transport historian and co-presenter of the BBC's Trainspotting Live, explains why. "The early 80s was still a time of great British national-funded engineering," he says. "Success at Birmingham Airport would have been a great advert for British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) to sell maglev internationally. (Remember that BREL was always trying to sell its technology overseas, which is why several Pacer trains, developed on bus bodies, were sold to Iran.) Birmingham's Maglev only lasted 11 years: replacement parts were getting hard to obtain for what was really a unique system. Buses took over, and eventually a cable-hauled SkyRail people-mover was installed atop the piers. That's not as exciting for people like me, who like the idea of being whisked in a hovertrain pushed along by magnets. But then our real transport future always has been a pretty crap approximation of our dreams." You don't have to look far to find other relics of this white-hot time when post-war confidence begat all sorts of oddities. There's the test track for the French Aerotrain outside Orleans – a rocket-powered prototype that never made it to middle age. And in Emsland, the German conglomerate Transrapid built a 32km supersized test track for their maglev, which seemed to be on course for success. A variation of this train shuttles passengers from Shanghai to the airport, and the plan was to copy the same model in Munich, and even build an intercity line from Berlin to Hamburg. Today the test track stands idle awaiting its fate, while the Transrapid vehicles are up for auction; a museum in Erfurt is trying to save the latter from the scrapyard. Little remains of Germany's other maglev, the M-Bahn (or Magnetbahn), a short-lived shuttle service that ran in West Berlin from 1989-91 connecting stations whose service had been previously severed by the Berlin Wall. With the Wall gone, the old U-Bahn service was reinstated and the M-Bahn, which had run along its tracks, disappeared from the capital of the new Germany. "The problem with high-speed maglev like Transrapid in Germany," says Tim Dunn, "is that it doesn't really stack up against high-speed rail. It's more expensive, it's lower capacity, it's more complex. There's a gap in the market, but there's no market in the gap. What is needed generally in mass transit is more capacity, rather than super high speed." But back in the post-war period, we thought we could have everything. Britain's tertiary science departments expanded. We built the Comet jetliner, then Concorde; and concrete buildings to house them that the world envied, like the huge Heathrow hangar that Sir Owen Williams, primarily an engineer, designed for BOAC's planes; and architect James Stirling's much-lauded engineering faculty at Leicester University. Yet a little-known footnote from this period involves the interaction of magnets in high-speed train design with that other British invention that prevailed for a while but then seemed to peter out: the hovercraft. "We have always wanted to get rid of wheels," says Railworld's Brian Pearce. "One invention [to this end] was Chris Cockerell's hovercraft." At the same time, maglev technology was being developed by the British inventor, Eric Laithwaite, who was working on the linear induction motor at Imperial College when he found a way for it to produce lift as well as forward thrust. The two systems were combined to form a tracked hovercraft. "So along came RTV31," says Pearce. "The train rode along the track on a cushion of air created by big electric fans. Not very energy efficient! The forward motion was created by a linear motor, which moved along rather than going round and round." RTV31 could, like France's Aérotrain or the German Transrapid system, have been a viable new form of intercity travel. But funding was insufficient throughout the project and eventually Britain pulled the plug. In February 1973, a week after the first test RTV31 hovertrain reached 157km/h, the project was abandoned as part of wider budget cuts. There's an eerie reminder of the RTV31 in the big-skied, liminal lands of East Anglia. The train was tested on a track that ran up alongside the New Bedford River at Earith in Cambridgeshire: appropriate, because this 'river' is actually a supreme piece of man-made engineering from an earlier age, a dead-straight dyke dug by Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the fens in the 1600s. The RTV31 test-track piers endure as further reminders of a past future. The vehicle itself sits not far away at Peterborough's Railworld, where its colourful exterior is strikingly visible to today's travellers on the East Coast Main Line from London to Scotland. Its neighbour is the final redundant Birmingham Maglev car. In the far east, attitudes to maglev are different. Japan began maglev testing at roughly the same time as Britain in 1962 and is today building the longest, fastest maglev in the world. It will run mostly in tunnel, at 500km/h, taking a shocking 40 minutes to travel the 300km between Tokyo and Nagoya. It's been christened the Chūō Shinkansen: just another, faster type of bullet train for the central districts. Japan's system is a superconducting maglev, different to the Birmingham and German systems. It uses superconducting coils in the train, which cause repulsion to move the train forward. The Japanese also use wheels for the vehicle to 'land' on the track at low speeds. It's understandable that most serious interest in maglev deployment is in Asia – Japan, China, India," says John Harding, former chief maglev scientist for the US Department of Transportation. "This is understandable wherever passenger traffic is huge and can dilute the enormous capital cost. (Maglev is indisputably more expensive upfront than high-speed rail.) Even for California, which has huge air passenger traffic between LA and San Francisco, there is nowhere near enough demand to justify maglev; probably not enough to justify high-speed rail. But the Chūō Shinkansen will probably be the greatest success for maglev." The first link between Tokyo and Nagoya is scheduled to begin operation in 2027. Then the Chinese are proposing a 600km/h system between Shanghai and Beijing. So there are still some people dreaming big. The latest iteration of this is of course Hyperloop, whose vacuum tube technology harks back to another British engineering innovation: the atmospheric railway, which was developed by Henry Pinkus, the Samuda Brothers and eventually by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This technology used varying air pressure to suck trains up a track in a partial vacuum. Lines popped up in London, Dublin and most notably Brunel's South Devon Railway, where the pipes were plagued by nibbling rats but the pumping stations survive as relics of Victorian visionaries. If those systems looked like something from HG Wells, with men in top hats smoking cigars, then Hyperloop, with its internet age funding from Tesla founder Elon Musk, could well end up appearing as a very 2010s caper when we look at back on it from the distance of decades. Or maybe Hyperloop will revolutionise travel like maglev was supposed to. Back in Burton Green, Andy Jones's maglev car lies in limbo. "I'd like to build a platform around it," he says, "turn it into a playhouse for the grandchildren perhaps? A couple of people want to take it away and turn it into a cafe." Perversely perhaps, its fate may be decided by another type of transport technology: more conventional high speed rail. The route for the much-disputed High Speed 2 line from London to Birmingham slices right through the field where the maglev car sits. In the 2000s the UK Ultraspeed proposal was floated to link London, Birmingham, the North and Scotland by maglev. It never materialised. HS2 was the eventual successor to the Ultraspeed plan, though a less futuristic one. Jones has another idea for his forward moving relic: "Maybe I'll turn it into viewing platform, so you could watch HS2's outdated technology." This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies People act and learn together for a rich mixture of reasons. The current story that most of us tell ourselves about how humans get things done is focused on the well-known flavors of self-interest, which make for great drama−survival, power, wealth, sex, glory. People also do things together for fun, for the love of a challenge, and because we sometimes enjoy working together to make something beneficial to everybody. If I had to reduce the essence of Homo sapiens to five words, “people do complicated things together” would do. Online social networks can be powerful amplifiers of collective action precisely because they augment and extend the power of ever-complexifying human sociality. To be sure, gossip, conflict, slander, fraud, greed and bigotry are part of human sociality, and those parts of human behavior can be amplified, too. But altruism, fun, community and curiosity are also parts of human sociality−and I propose that the Web is an existence proof that these capabilities can be amplified, as well. Indeed, our species’ social inventiveness is central to what it is to be human. The parts of the human brain that evolved most recently, and which are connected to what we consider to be our “higher” faculties of reason and forethought, are also essential to social life. The neural information-processing required for recognizing people, remembering their reputations, learning the rituals that remove boundaries of mistrust and bind groups together, from bands to communities to civilizations, may have been enabled by (and may have driven the rapid evolution of) that uniquely human brain structure, the neocortex. But I didn’t start out by thinking about the evolutionary dynamics of sociality and the amplification of collective action. Like all of the others in this book, I started out by experiencing the new ways of being that Internet social media have made possible. And like the other Freesouls, Joi Ito has played a catalytic, communitarian, Mephistophelian, Pied-Piper-esque, authority-challenging, fun-loving role in my experiences of the possibilities of life online. Friends and Enthusiasts To me, direct experience of what I later came to call virtual communities preceded theories about the ways people do things together online. I met Joi Ito in the 1980s as part of what we called “the Electronic Networking Association,” a small group of enthusiasts who thought that sending black and white text to BBSs with 1200 baud modems was fun. Joi, like Stewart Brand, was and is what Fred Turner calls a network entrepreneur, who occupies what Ronald Burt would call key structural roles−what Malcolm Gladwell called a connector. Joi was also a believer in going out and doing things and not just talking about it. Joi was one of the founders of a multicultural BBS in Tokyo, and in the early 1990s I had begun to branch out from BBSs and the WELL to make connections in many different parts of the world. The fun of talking, planning, debating and helping each other online came before the notion that our tiny subculture might grow into a worldwide, many-to-many, multimedia network of a billion people. We started to dream about future cybersocial possibilities only after personally experiencing something new, moving and authentic in our webs of budding friendship and collaboration. In recent years, cyberculture studies has grown into a discipline−more properly, an interdiscipline involving sociologists, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, economists, programmers and political scientists. Back when people online argued in 1200 baud text about whether one could properly call what we were doing a form of community, there was no body of empirical evidence to serve as a foundation for scientific argument−all theory was anecdotal. By now, however, there is plenty of data. One particularly useful affordance of online sociality is that a great deal of public behavior is recorded and structured in a way that makes it suitable for systematic study. One effect of the digital Panopticon is the loss of privacy and the threat of tyrannical social control; another effect is a rich body of data about online behavior. Every one of Wikipedia’s millions of edits, and all the discussion and talk pages associated with those edits, is available for inspection−along with billions of Usenet messages. Patterns are beginning to emerge. We’re beginning to know something about what works and what doesn’t work with people online, and why. Does knowing something about the way technical architecture influences behavior mean that we can put that knowledge to use? Now that we are beginning to learn a little about the specific sociotechnical affordances of online social networks, is it possible to derive a normative design? How should designers think about the principles of beneficial social software? Can inhumane or dehumanizing effects of digital socializing be mitigated or eliminated by better media design? In what ways does the design of social media enable or prevent heartfelt communitas, organized collective action, social capital, cultural and economic production? I’ve continued to make a direct experience of my life online−from lifelong friends like Joi Ito to the other people around the world I’ve come to know, because online media made it possible to connect with people who shared my interests, even if I had never heard of them before, even if they lived on the other side of the world. But in parallel with my direct experience of the blogosphere, vlogosphere, twitterverse and other realms of digital discourse, I’ve continued to track new research and theory about what cyberculture might mean and the ways in which online communication media influence and are shaped by social forces. The Values of Volunteers One of the first questions that arose from my earliest experiences online was the question of why people in online communities should spend so much time answering each other’s questions, solving each other’s problems, without financial compensation. I first encountered Yochai Benkler in pursuit of my curiosity about the reason people would work together with strangers, without pay, to create something nobody owns−free and open source software. First in Coase’s Penguin, and then in The Wealth of Networks, Benkler contributed to important theoretical foundations for a new way of thinking about online activity−”commons based peer production,” technically made possible by a billion PCs and Internet connections−as a new form of organizing economic production, together with the market and the firm. If Benkler is right, the new story about how humans get things done includes an important corollary−if tools like the PC and the Internet make it easy enough, people are willing to work together for non-market incentives to create software, encyclopedias and archives of public domain literature. While the old story is that people are highly unlikely to cooperate with strangers to voluntarily create public goods, the new story seems to be that people will indeed create significant common value voluntarily, if it is easy enough for anybody to add what they want, whenever they want to add it (“self election”). There is plenty of evidence to support the hypothesis that what used to be considered altruism is now a byproduct of daily life online. So much of what we take for granted as part of daily life online, from the BIND software that makes domain names work, to the Apache webserver that powers a sizable chunk of the world’s websites, to the cheap Linux servers that Google stacks into its global datacloud, was created by volunteers who gave their creations away to make possible something larger−the Web as we know it. To some degree, the explosion of creativity that followed the debut of the Web in 1993 was made possible by deliberate design decisions on the part of the Internet’s architects−the end-to-end principle, built into the TCP/IP protocols that make the Internet possible, which deliberately decentralizes the power to innovate, to build something new and even more powerful on what already exists. Is it possible to understand exactly what it is about the web that makes Wikipedia, Linux, FightAIDS@Home, the Gutenberg Project and Creative Commons possible? And if so, can this theoretical knowledge be put to practical use? I am struck by a phrase of Benkler’s from his essay in this book: “We must now turn our attention to building systems that support human sociality.” That sounds right. But how would it be done? It’s easy to say and not as easy to see the ways in which social codes and power structures mold the design of communication media. We must develop a participative pedagogy, assisted by digital media and networked publics, that focuses on catalyzing, inspiring, nourishing, facilitating, and guiding literacies essential to individual and collective life. A Participative Pedagogy To accomplish this attention-turning, we must develop a participative pedagogy, assisted by digital media and networked publics, that focuses on catalyzing, inspiring, nourishing, facilitating, and guiding literacies essential to individual and collective life in the 21st century. Literacies are where the human brain, human sociality and communication technologies meet. We’re accustomed to thinking about the tangible parts of communication media−the devices and networks−but the less visible social practices and social affordances, from the alphabet to TCP/IP, are where human social genius can meet the augmenting power of technological networks. Literacy is the most important method Homo sapiens has used to introduce systems and tools to other humans, to train each other to partake of and contribute to culture, and to humanize the use of instruments that might otherwise enable commodification, mechanization and dehumanization. By literacy, I mean, following on Neil Postman and others, the set of skills that enable individuals to encode and decode knowledge and power via speech, writing, printing and collective action, and which, when learned, introduce the individual to a community. Literacy links technology and sociality. The alphabet did not cause the Roman Empire, but made it possible. Printing did not cause democracy or science, but literate populations, enabled by the printing press, devised systems for citizen governance and collective knowledge creation. The Internet did not cause open source production, Wikipedia or emergent collective responses to natural disasters, but it made it possible for people to act together in new ways, with people they weren’t able to organize action with before, in places and at paces for which collective action had never been possible. Literacies are the prerequisite for the human agency that used alphabets, presses and digital networks to create wealth, alleviate suffering and invent new institutions. If the humans currently alive are to take advantage of digital technologies to address the most severe problems that face our species and the biosphere, computers, telephones and digital networks are not enough. We need new literacies around participatory media, the dynamics of cooperation and collective action, the effective deployment of attention and the relatively rational and critical discourse necessary for a healthy public sphere. Media Literacies In Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement, I wrote: If print culture shaped the environment in which the Enlightenment blossomed and set the scene for the Industrial Revolution, participatory media might similarly shape the cognitive and social environments in which twenty first century life will take place (a shift in the way our culture operates). For this reason, participatory media literacy is not another subject to be shoehorned into the curriculum as job training for knowledge workers. Participatory media include (but aren’t limited to) blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging and social bookmarking, music-photo-video sharing, mashups, podcasts, digital storytelling, virtual communities, social network services, virtual environments, and videoblogs. These distinctly different media share three common, interrelated characteristics: Many-to-many media now make it possible for every person connected to the network to broadcast as well as receive text, images, audio, video, software, data, discussions, transactions, computations, tags, or links to and from every other person. The asymmetry between broadcaster and audience that was dictated by the structure of pre-digital technologies has changed radically. This is a technical- structural characteristic. Participatory media are social media whose value and power derives from the active participation of many people. Value derives not just from the size of the audience, but from their power to link to each other, to form a public as well as a market. This is a psychological and social characteristic. Social networks, when amplified by information and communication networks, enable broader, faster, and lower cost coordination of activities. This is an economic and political characteristic. Like the early days of print, radio, and television, the present structure of the participatory media regime−the political, economic, social and cultural institutions that constrain and empower the way the new medium can be used, and which impose structures on flows of information and capital−is still unsettled. As legislative and regulatory battles, business competition, and social institutions vie to control the new regime, a potentially decisive and presently unknown variable is the degree and kind of public participation. Because the unique power of the new media regime is precisely its participatory potential, the number of people who participate in using it during its formative years, and the skill with which they attempt to take advantage of this potential, is particularly salient. Like Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins, I believe that a participatory culture in which most of the population see themselves as creators as well as consumers of culture is far more likely to generate freedom and wealth for more people than one in which a small portion of the population produces culture that the majority passively consume. The technological infrastructure for participatory media has grown rapidly, piggybacking on Moore’s Law, globalization, the telecom bubble and the innovations of Swiss physicists and computer science students. Increasingly, access to that infrastructure−the ability to upload a Macaca video or uncover a threat to democracy−has become economically accessible. Literacy−access to the codes and communities of vernacular video, microblogging, social bookmarking, wiki collaboration−is what is required to use that infrastructure to create a participatory culture. A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.

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Voting blocks Even if your interest in global politics extends no further than an occasional worried glance at the headlines, it will not have escaped your notice that there's something in the air these past few years: a kind of comprehensive, worldwide souring of the possibilities of representative democracy. You might not have thought of it in just these terms, but you'll certainly recognise its effects: it has shown up in phenomena as varied and seemingly disconnected as the Brexit referendum, the candidacy of Donald Trump in the USA and the turn toward authoritarian parties and governments in France, Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines and elsewhere. This is, perhaps, the pre-eminent political story of our time. What all of these more recent developments have in common is the sense among a wide swath of the electorate, in country after country, that the conventional practice of democracy has failed them. It no longer expresses the will of the people, if it ever did, and now serves only the needs of distant, shadowy, unspecified elites. And as is so often the case, there is a grain of truth to this. Our democracies certainly do seem to be having a hard time reckoning with many profound crises, whether these involve the integration of refugees, the disappearance of work or the threats of climate change. Our existing ways of making collective decisions have conspicuously failed to help us develop policies equal to the scale of crisis. There really is a global 1 per cent, and they seem to be hell-bent on having themselves a new Gilded Age, even as the public services the rest of us depend on are stripped to the bone. Throw in the despair that sets in after many years of imposed austerity and it's no wonder that many people have had enough. Some voters, either impervious to the lessons of history, or certain that whatever comes, they'll wind up on top, seek the clarity and vigour of a strong hand. They are perhaps encouraged by authoritarian leaders abroad, with their own internal reasons for disparaging the practice of democracy and much to gain by undermining confidence in it. Other voters have no particular time for the right, but feel betrayed by the parties they once trusted to advance their class interest. When they look around and see that someone other than them is indeed profiting from the status quo, they lose all patience with the idea that redress can be found in the ballot box. They're willing to see their own house burned down, if that's what it takes to stick it to the despised elites that are suddenly, heedlessly gentrifying their neighbourhoods and 'decanting' them from their homes. These are certainly depressing responses to the situation we find ourselves in, but they're not in any way irrational. Yet there's another, more hopeful and interesting way of responding to this same set of facts. It argues that what we need now is more democracy, not less; and a new kind of democracy at that, one founded on technical means. This curious prospect is presented to us by modes of social organisation and self-governance based on the blockchain, the technology underlying the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. And though blockchain advocates are nowhere near as prominent as the neo-authoritarian tendencies everywhere around us, what they are arguing for – 'distributed consensus' – is so interesting and so utterly unlike anything that has gone before that it deserves our fullest and most serious consideration. We're told that this emerging technology of 'distributed consensus' makes entirely new forms of human association possible; that anyone who wants to will be able to organise themselves into non-hierarchical groups with as much ability to act in the world as any state or corporation. The idea is that governmental structures at just about every level of society would be replaced by voluntary associations represented as software. Participants in these groups could remain anonymous to one another, if desired. But their identities would be verified – and their votes authenticated – by the same processes that secure the Bitcoin network, meaning that a permanent, secure record of every vote ever taken would be available for all to see. As each of these groups would be able to dispose of fiscal resources directly, Porto Alegre-style participatory budgeting could be realised, at whatever scale required. And just like Bitcoin, all of this functionality would be distributed across the network, making it inherently resistant to attempts at state censorship or control. Enthusiasm for distributed consensus is especially marked on the left, and it's easy to understand why: you'd have a hard time intentionally designing language more likely to appeal to tech-savvy horizontalists than 'distributed consensus'. The phrase summons up images of a society organised as a supple network instead of a hierarchy, its far-flung and mobile constituents bound together by a guiding ethos of participation, and an immaterial but powerful calculated technology. Thoughtful veterans of the post-2008 moment could be forgiven for thinking that, just maybe, here at last is a concrete way of achieving ends promised but never quite delivered by 15M, Occupy, Nuit Débout, or what has come to be known as the broader global 'movement of the squares': a commons outside the market and the state, a framework for democratic decision-making truly suited to the context of 21st-century life, and just possibly a functioning anarchy. This is certainly a supremely attractive vision, at least for those of us whose hearts beat a little bit faster at the prospect of ordinary people everywhere taking their fate into their own hands. In fact, there's really only one problem with it: it's all based on a misunderstanding. Let's back up a little. What, exactly, does distributed consensus mean? And what does it have to do with the new forms of democracy that might now be available to us? At a time when 'disruption' and 'disintermediation' remain potent words in the tech community, it was inevitable that someone would think to disrupt the way we organise civic life. Early experiments in digital democracy mostly confined themselves to tinkering in the mechanics of an otherwise conventional political process – working out, for example, how verified electronic voting might work. But more recent proposals, such as the "distributed autonomous organisations" pioneered by the Ethereum project, and the structurally similar Backfeed and democracy.earth initiatives, offer far more ambitious ideas of networked citizenship and decision-making. All three are based on the decentralised system of authentication that was originally developed for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The details of this mechanism are fiendishly difficult to understand, but its essence – and the innovation that so excites fans of networked democracy – is that it proves the legitimacy of Bitcoin transactions computationally, instead of relying on the authority of any government or banking institution. Everything rests on the blockchain, a permanent, transparent record of every exchange of Bitcoin ever made, an identical copy of which is held locally by every machine participating in the network. The blockchain maintains and reconciles all account balances, and is the sole arbiter in the event of a discrepancy or dispute. Whenever a new transaction appears on the Bitcoin network, all of its nodes perform an elaborate series of calculations aimed at validating it, and a majority of them must agree its legitimacy before it can be added to the shared record. This peer-to-peer process of distributed consensus can be applied beyond cryptocurrency to other situations that require some kind of procedure for the collective construction of truth. One of these is communal decision-making, at every level from household to nation. So by extension distributed consensus could be applied to the practice of democracy. Moreover, frameworks based on the blockchain promise to solve a number of long-standing democratic problems. They give organisers the ability to form associations rapidly and equip them with clear, secure and answerable decision processes. Their provisions allow members of those associations to float proposals, raise points for discussion among their peers, and allow enough time for deliberation before a question is called to a vote. They seem well suited to address some of the limits and frustrations of the Occupy-style forum, chiefly its requirement that everyone sharing an interest be present at once in order to be counted. And by allowing an association to specify any decision rule it pleases – from simple majority to absolute consensus – these frameworks even seem as if they might address the distaste some of us have always harboured for the coercion implicit in any majoritarian process (many don't like the idea that they need to go along with a notion just because 52 per cent of the population voted for it). These systems would appear to be applicable to democracy, then. But more than that, they gesture beyond conventional politics, toward something not far off utopian. When I meet people who are genuinely excited by platforms like democracy.earth, Ethereum and Backfeed, most often what they're responding to is not so much about how these frameworks address the practicalities of small-group decision-making. They're more about the radical, classically anarchist vision they offer of a world in which power is distributed across a federation of nonhierarchical assemblies unsanctioned by any apparatus of state, each one lasting just long enough to enact its participants' will before evaporating for ever. And that's why it's little short of heartbreaking to conclude that their hopes stem from a confusion of language. There's a fair degree of slippage between the way we'd be likely to interpret 'distributed consensus' in a political context, and what the same phrase actually denotes in its proper, technical context. As it turns out, here the word 'consensus' doesn't have anything to do with that sense of common purpose nurtured among a group of people over the course of long and difficult negotiations. Rather, it is technical jargon: it simply refers to the process by which all of the computers participating in the Bitcoin network eventually come to agree that a given transaction is valid. Instead of being a technically mediated process of agreement among peers and equals separated from one another in space and time, it's actually just a reconciliation of calculations being performed by distant machines. To mistake the one for the other is to commit a dangerous error. Why dangerous? One of the primary risks we face in embracing blockchain-based structures is that we may not actually be advancing the set of values we think we are. The provisions that frameworks like Ethereum, Backfeed and democracy.earth are founded on, in particular, are difficult to reconcile with other values and commitments we may hold, especially the notion of a life in common. An Ethereum distributed autonomous organisation, for example, requires that members buy shares in it in order to participate. This is necessitated by the reward structure that incentivises machines to perform the calculations that establish distributed consensus; but it seems curiously at odds with our understanding of political participation as an inalienable right. Ethereum democracies, too, have something most others do not: owners, someone empowered to add or remove voting members at will, set its binding decision rules, and change those rules whenever they desire. This is certainly a novel and interesting definition of a democracy. In fact, we find, on looking just a little more closely, that relations of property and ownership are absolutely central to this set of technologies – perhaps unsurprisingly, given its origins in the libertarian cryptocurrency community. This, for example, is how Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin thinks of human association: "In general, a human organisation can be defined as combination of two things: a set of property, and a protocol for a set of individuals, which may or may not be divided into certain classes with different conditions for entering or leaving the set, to interact with each other including rules for under what circumstances the individuals may use certain parts of the property." On closer inspection, this doesn't seem to have much to do with the practice of collective self-determination. And with a similar emphasis on property rights, the discourse around the blockchain also routinely treats as uncontroversial statements which are no such thing. The acceptance of these values runs so deep that when democracy.earth announced itself "a Y Combinator-backed organisation", nobody involved evidently wondered whether something which aspired to be a radical new way of doing politics should tout its backing by a venture-capital seed fund based in Silicon Valley. However utopian a politics of distributed consensus might sound to us, then, there's no way in which it can be prised apart from the entirely conventional constructions of ownership, private property and capital accumulation at its very heart, at least not in its present form. The profoundly murky quality of blockchain technology – and the relative lack of accessible but technically sophisticated resources that might explain it – thus causes some of us to endorse a set of propositions we'd otherwise recoil from. We criticise lack of government transparency, yet the blockchain is unfathomable to most people. Finally, too many of those touting distributed democracy retain a weirdly naive faith in the promises made about the blockchain's ability to transcend human fallibility, despite the well-known history of Bitcoin hacks, thefts and exploits. The founders of democracy.earth, for example, would have us believe that the blockchain is 'incorruptible', when, as all long-time observers of the cryptocurrency scene know, it's anything but. There is no better case in point than Ethereum's own networked democracy, a distributed venture fund rather confusingly called the DAO – Decentralised Autonomous Organisation – which was notoriously drained of a full third of its value by someone who evidently understood its coding better than its own originators. The Ethereum blockchain was subsequently 'hard forked' to undo this exploit, but only at the cost of angering that passionate fraction of their community convinced that distributed calculation could achieve what millennia of human law and custom had not. Though they may someday be robust enough to undergird decisions of genuine import, the experience of the DAO suggests that blockchain-based protocols are at present no more trustworthy than any of the less glamorous methods for assessing communal sentiment we already have at our disposal: the assembly, the discussion and the poll. There's a long list of benefits that might follow from shifting civic life on to a networked platform. If people could participate in public life from their laptop (or smartphone, or gaming platform), we might be able to democratise democracy itself, in all sorts of salutary ways. We might fold in all those who, by dint of their work, childcare or family obligations, are too exhausted or pressed for time to attend a decision-making assembly, and prevent the common circumstance in which such an assembly is captured by a bad-faith participant with an axe to grind. We could avoid having to gather stakeholders in a given place and time to make decisions of common import, and allow people to participate in public life as and when they were able to. And we could apply to that participation all the tools that arise from being networked and digital, particularly the ability to capture and analyse detailed data about a matter up for discussion. Under such circumstances, decisions could be compared between polities and jurisdictions, or with ones made locally in the past, and every aspect of a community's process of self-determination could be searchable, so available to all who might benefit. Over time, we might even learn to make wiser decisions, individually and collectively. Though the devil is always in the detail of implementation, these possibilities are all well worth exploring; and taken together they certainly furnish us with a strong case for networked democracy. But there are problems even with such relatively simple articulations of civic technology. Not everyone owns a smartphone, even now, let alone any more expensive networked devices. Just over 60 per cent of North Americans do, which falls far short of the universal access on which any system for networked democracy would need to be based. And technologists and advocates for new technology are often blind to the digital divide, which prevents measures that seem utterly obvious and self-evident to them from being at all suited to the lives of others. Transplanting democracy on to the blockchain is more problematic still, especially for those of us who aspire to a life broadly governed by the principles of the commons. When we dig beneath appealing-sounding buzzwords like 'peer-to-peer' and 'open source', we find that all of the current, real-world examples of blockchain technology commit us to a set of values that isn't merely at variance with those principles, but is outright inimical to them. (Our ignorance about how the blockchain actually works is an additional source of concern. When something is this complicated, this difficult for even very bright people to understand, it's inherently open to the greatest potential for abuse. The market in derivative securities comes to mind.) But maybe these are errors we can learn from. It's worth asking if some of the things the blockchain-based frameworks promise to do for us might be lifted whole out of the matrix of their origins. They get a lot of things very right, after all – particularly their understanding that democracy is an ongoing process, and not something that happens in a voting booth on one day every four or five years. And by framing the practice of active citizenship as something appropriate to every scale of collective existence, they suggest that such participation should occupy a larger place in our civic lives; that we can and should assume control over a wider range of the circumstances of our being. By the same token, democratic practice is a subtle thing. It is possible to do a great deal of damage by applying it without due regard for its strengths and limitations – witness Brexit. So perhaps the most important thing we might seek to gain from our encounter with tools like Backfeed and democracy.earth is a lesson in what works at what scale and what doesn't. We could then design a generation of distributed collective decision processes that are straightforward enough to be understood by the people using them, and not beholden to profoundly interested notions of private advantage. Developing an infrastructure built from the ground up would be a great way of redeeming the hope that's already been invested in these systems, and it might even convince those who have become disillusioned with democracy that there's more life in the concept yet. Maybe it's time we got started. This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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The forests bear the carbon Amogh Rai is standing on a small patch of wooded hillside, his Android phone held up above him, taking in the canopies of the trees that rise up around us. There's a problem though. It's a winter's day in the northern Indian foothills of the Himalayas, and the sun isn't breaking through the clouds with its usual clarity. Rai is using an app on his phone to help him understand the canopy's interception of light, but a layer of haze is preventing the 27-year-old Indian from collecting any meaningful data. Around him are some other tools of the trade: a portable device known as a ceptometer, used for measuring leaf area index; a spherical densiometer, for understanding canopy foliage and foliage covering the ground; and a laser rangefinder, which is used to estimate the height of trees but which has a tendency to malfunction. I'm six feet tall. The laser rangefinder is often convinced that I'm actually 17 metres. What is happening here may resemble a comedy of elemental errors, but it has significance far beyond the mountainous forests of Kumaon, one of two regions in the state of Uttarakhand. Rai is working with a number of other ecologists and field assistants on the pithily titled research project, Long-term Monitoring of Biomass Stocks and Forest Community Structures in Temperate Zone of Western Himalaya. Spearheaded by the non-governmental Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR) and funded by India's Department of Science and Technology, this project is about climate change. It seeks to find out how much carbon is being absorbed by the region's forests. This is achieved by taking the information collected – foliage overlay, the height of the trees, leaf area index and canopy layer, among other things – and using it to make an allometric equation. Understanding the basic mechanism of carbon sequestration and the level of human disturbance in these forests can then provide the framework for a plan that seeks to pay local people to maintain the forests. If the project can determine how much human interaction with the forest has affected the trees' ability to photosynthesise, then local people can be paid to preserve the forest. Otherwise, its ability to act as a 'carbon sink' (anything that absorbs more carbon than it releases) risks damage from overuse. Right now, the forests of Kumaon are used primarily for fodder and fuel. Traditionally, families in the area had as many as 15 or 20 cows of their own. These cows were particularly dependent on the forest leaves for fodder and bedding. The fewer leaves a tree has, the less able it is to photosynthesise properly. Today, there are far fewer cows in the area and so fodder use has come down by a multiple of four or five in the last 10 years. The market has come to Kumaon – once an isolated area – and artificial substitutes for fodder are now available to buy locally, with NGOs providing subsidies for this. But while the pressure on the forest to provide fodder has come down, the need for it to provide fuel has gone up. This is in the Himalayan foothills, after all, and it gets cold in winter. There is little central heating and so a serious amount of wood is needed for fires to heat houses and light stoves. Where extended families once lived together, with grandparents, parents and children all under one roof, now the nuclear family is becoming the norm, meaning that requirement for fuel has gone up. And if the people of Kumaon are to use the forest less, they need compensation, or they will have no fire to warm them through the winter months. Substitutes for wood are available but are unaffordable for most. So the challenge for this project mirrors the challenge faced by climate change scientists and policymakers across the world: how can you reduce fossil fuel emissions and maintain and improve carbon sinks without disrupting or destroying the lives of local people, many of whom will be those most affected by climate change? Last March, US science agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released figures that showed record concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, at over 400 parts per million (ppm). These levels are unprecedented in over a million years and have caused over one degree of warming. The level considered 'safe' – 350 ppm – was exceeded nearly three decades ago. Today's carbon concentrations represent a more than 40 per cent increase on those found in the atmosphere in the middle of the 18th century, before the beginning of the industrial revolution. Forests are an important part of this increase. They are, along with the planet's oceans, one of two major carbon sinks. Deforestation puts carbon into the atmosphere while at the same time removing that sink. "You can say that one quarter of this increase in carbon concentrations since the 18th century has been caused by deforestation," says Corinne Le Quéré, author of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a professor of climate change science and policy at the University of East Anglia. In 2014, the IPCC found that 11 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions were caused by forestry and other land use. Other sources claim this figure is anything up to 30 per cent. While Le Quéré points out that the effect of deforestation was more pronounced in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was a key driver in the process of industrialisation, she emphasises the ongoing importance of forests in the fight for a better environment. "We have very big ambitions to limit climate change well below two degrees… In terms of delivering a policy to achieve this, you absolutely need to have your forest in place and you absolutely need to tackle deforestation, because you cannot reach that level of climate stabilisation without it. Reforestation and afforestation is one of the best ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and forests have so many additional benefits for cleaning the air, cleaning the water, and so on." To begin working out how people in the Himalayan foothills might be reimbursed for preserving the forest, Amogh Rai and his colleagues need to find out how much carbon they are actually taking in. "We don't know how much carbon these forests are sequestering," says Rai. "If you are talking about the forest as a sink for carbon, you need to figure out how much carbon this place is storing, versus how much it is producing. And for that you need to go back to the basics of forestry. You need to figure it out by laying ecological plots measuring 400 metres squared in different areas, at different altitudes and in different disturbance gradients." Rai started working on the project in March 2014. He grew up in Delhi and was something of a tech prodigy. But as his career was advancing at the kind of rate that would leave most people sick with jealousy, he also felt something akin to the call of the wild. More intellectually curious than professionally ambitious, he enrolled at Dr BR Ambedkar University as a master's student and, in December 2013, travelled to Kumaon to work on his dissertation, which was on a tree called Myrica esculenta , known locally as kafal . "I love the forest because it is a place of silence and beauty," he says. "Also, it is one of the last places of refuge from strident urbanisation. A typical city kid reaction to noise, and tempo of life, I suppose." Rai's boss at CEDAR, Rajesh Thadani, a Yale-educated forest ecologist in his forties, is equally romantic about his attachment to the forest, quoting Thoreau to me: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." It's not hard to imagine both men communing with woodland spirits. Kumaon's unique elements appealed to Rai. The area has two main types of oak tree, a number of pines, rhododendrons, cedars and maples. There are leopards, porcupines, wild boars, a variety of snakes and rodents, and 200 species of butterfly. The forests grow down hillsides into valleys and up along plateaus. There are now 40 forest plots in Kumaon, and the hope is that in the next couple of years that total will rise to 100. One night, I join Amogh Rai for dinner at the house of one of his two field assistants, Narendra. Now in his forties, Narendra is from Kumaon and has three small children. He doesn’t earn much but he is given supplementary income when he needs it and owns a small amount of land in the area. In a room furnished only with a single bed, we sit on the floor and eat food grown in the local fields: daikon, tomatoes sprinkled with marijuana ("Yes, dude, welcome to the Himalayas," laughs Rai), nettles, smoked chilli and bread. Having left school at 17, Narendra tells me he worked in a Nestlé factory and then as a mechanic, before realising that he'd rather be back in the rural village he came from. Haldwani, the nearby town he was working in, was too hot and he just loved the forest too much. This was in the 1990s, when Kumaon was a particularly remote part of the country. It still is, comparatively speaking, but the arrival of mobile phones, satellite technology and the expansion of the road network has changed the area. The population has grown and rich professionals from the city have begun to build second homes in Kumaon, drawn to the area, like the British before them, by the promise of peace and tranquillity in the mountains, by the chance to get away from it all. Narendra remembers that, in these times, when far more people kept cattle, the forest was a place almost everyone used and understood. "We used to go out in a throng and bring trees down to use the leaves for manure, which is also used as a bedding for cattle," he says. "The animals would piss and shit on it and then it was used as manure." Today, keeping cattle has become economically unviable and artificial fertiliser can be bought at the market. As a result, fewer people use and understand the forest. "There is a strong relationship between the people and the forest in the area but it has weakened, for good and for bad," Rajesh Thadani, who also worked closely with Narendra, tells me. Good because the forest is less disturbed, bad because caring for the forest now comes less naturally. "People don't quite have the same religious and cultural attachment to it. Cattle became unprofitable. The quality of schools hasn't got better but most children now go to school, so they don't want to do agricultural work when they leave… If you don't feel a sense of ownership and belonging, you are less likely to do things. The expectation of money has arrived. The forest has become an externality." There is a conflict and a contradiction here: local people may be paid to preserve the forest by using it less, but using the forest less will weaken their ties to it, thus making the desire to preserve it less urgent. It's the kind of dilemma globalised industrial capitalism throws up everywhere. The system itself has wreaked havoc on the environment, but in a structure where even people in remote areas often aspire to a certain kind of lifestyle and expect to be paid for things they might once have done for free as part of the collective harmony of a community, the monetising of things like forest maintenance has come to be seen as a potential solution. If a value is put on the forest, then, in a market-driven world, local communities will be able to better resist, for example, the planned construction of a massive hotel in an undisturbed patch of woodland. Right now, Rai argues, "you only have aesthetic reasons, but we live and operate in a world that has a different set of values. For the first time, you can give a number to the value of a forest. It becomes a place that is [about] more than wondrous beasts." This expectation of money both jars with and is in keeping with Kumaon's past. When Rajesh Thadani first came to the area in the 90s, he was strongly influenced by Ramachandra Guha's book The Unquiet Woods, a short history of the Chipko movement published in 1990. A wonderful writer, Guha remains one of India's most influential thinkers on environmental and social issues. His and Joan Martinez-Alier's distinction between the 'full-stomach' environmentalism of the north and the 'empty-belly' environmentalism of the global south strikes a chord in Kumaon. There is a big difference between chopping down some trees in a forest to keep yourself warm in the Himalayan winter, and laying waste to the Amazon in the name of the fast food industry. The Chipko movement was a phenomenon in 1970s India, an organised resistance to the destruction of forests across the country. The villagers who formed it were actual tree huggers: the word Chipko means 'embrace'. In one incident, women in the Alaknanda valley, responding to the Indian government's decision to grant a plot of forest land to a sporting goods company, formed a human ring around the trees, preventing the men from cutting them down. In Kumaon, there is a strong history of this kind of resistance to exploitation by powerful forces. As Guha and the political scientist Arun Agrawal have pointed out, the villagers of the region did not take the impositions of the British Raj lying down. The 'empty-belly' environmentalism of India awakened early, a fierce reaction to the iniquitous and destructive development processes foisted on the country by the imperial power. From the late 19th century into the 20th, the Raj introduced legislation that reduced the rights of local people to use their forests. From 1916 to 1921, villagers in Kumaon set hundreds of forest fires in protest against such legislation. They depended on forests for firewood for heating and cooking, manure for fields and fodder for livestock. This demand was seen as running contrary to the needs of the British, who wanted to carve up the forests of Kumaon to create railway sleepers. This kind of practice didn't end with the Raj. "The government department once went on a rampage and planted cypresses all over the place," Amogh Rai says, laughing at the wasteful absurdity of the idea. "They planted them because someone who is a bureaucrat would have gone to England and thought, 'Oh, beautiful trees, let's plonk them up there.' But the cypress doesn't bear fruit, its wood is rotten when it comes to burning, its leaves are spindly so you can't feed it to cattle. All in all, it's a shitty tree." British officials used the excuse that local practices were environmentally destructive to defend the regulation of vast areas of forest. Nearly half the land in Kumaon was taken over by the forest department which, by the beginning of the 20th century, was endeavouring to protect land from fire as well as clamp down on cattle grazing and fodder harvests. In response to the regulations and reclassifications landing on them, villagers broke the rules. Fodder and fuel was extracted, livestock was grazed. British forest officers were fed misinformation like a fire is fed wood. Protests became more common and led to massive demonstrations in the second decade of the 20th century. These together with forest fires intersected with outrage at the coolie system of forced labour extraction, under which villagers were obliged to work for the colonial administration. In 1922, the forest department's annual report conceded that local campaigning had led to the breakdown of British control of the forests. The Kumaon Forest Grievances Committee recommended the establishment of forest councils that, following the return of the land to the people, would manage forests belonging to the villages. In 1931, the Forest Council Rules made this recommendation a formal reality and 3,000 elected forest councils – Van Panchayats – were created to manage the forests of Kumaon. Villagers could once again use their land the way they saw fit, free from the commercial priorities of the colonial government. This new plan to preserve the forests of the region in the 21st century is also being met with accusations of imperialism. A handful of local NGOs give the impression that the government is "selling up the mountains". Though it is a plan driven by Indians rather than the British, it can still be seen by Kumaonis as coming from outside and on high, an imperialistic scam dreamed up "for their own good". Money, while desired, also generates suspicion. This is exacerbated by the fact that, two years ago, the Uttarakhand state government was given about $20m by the Japanese government and industry, which have a vested interest in promoting forestry around the globe. No one seems to be sure what has happened to this money. There is a timber mafia in the region that is generous to local politicians, many of whom are widely believed to be corrupt. Since I left the area at the end of last year, a drought has resulted in a series of forest fires, which have not been dealt with properly. It is hoped that the Van Panchayats – the forest councils – will be immune to the corruption found in local government and that they could hold the key to any scheme that seeks to compensate local people for maintaining the forest. These established councils can link villages to the money made available for forest maintenance. A tripartite system involving the Van Panchayats, the NGOs and the government could then be set up to make sure the money falls into the right hands. Unlike carbon trading schemes or high profile incentive programmes like REDD and REDD+, the system for compensation envisaged in Kumaon would not be open to foreign tampering or carbon offsetting, though the question of the Japanese money complicates matters. "In developing economies, green investment has not gained any worthwhile traction," says Rai. "In developed countries without much ecological diversity, an understanding of their importance is an important driver in decisions to invest in research in the developing world. So, it is beneficial. The problem arises when these 'investments' get turned into market-oriented solutions. So yes, when companies in Germany 'gift' improved cookstoves in Tanzania and earn carbon credit, it is a problem." This 'gifting' is not what anyone has in mind for the Himalayan foothills. The idea is to create something fairly simple that can be executed neatly across a spectrum. A paper will be submitted to the Department of Science and Technology and then a conversation about incentive structures for the local community will begin, using the carbon sequestration data as a basis for what should be offered. There are fears about corruption; and the dispersal of money remains a sketchy and murky affair but, as Rai says, "the idea is that you at least need to get this thing started. If you don't pay people enough to maintain the forest, give me two reasons why they should keep the forests as they are, so that you or I could come and enjoy them? Because they are the ones who have to face the winters here, they are the ones who have to go and work in the forests here." Consultations are ongoing with villagers, various NGOs and the forest department. Once upon a time, the strong social system – the ecologically minded functioning of the rural villages extolled by Gandhi – and dependence on the forest meant the environment was preserved. Now, these things are changing fairly rapidly. The whole idea of working as a social group is getting lost and so, Rai argues, "incentives are going to play a larger role. I've had conversations with people where they've said, 'The forests are great, we want to protect them but we don't have any money.' So it's not just about giving them an incentive to protect the forest, it's that they need money to protect the forest." With the data now collected, allometric equations will determine how much carbon is sequestered in the forests. This information will then be used to put an economic value on the various plots, which will translate into payments made to local communities through the forest councils. This money could begin to pour in within the year. During my time in Kumaon, the Paris Climate Change Conference takes place. When I ask Rajesh Thadani how CEDAR's project fits into the bigger picture, he says: "Carbon sinks are important and a good mitigation measure – but [they] would be effective only in conjunction with other measures." I watch some of the news coverage from Paris with Rai. There is so much to be done, so many vested interests to vanquish. "I find it extremely political," Rai says. "Climate change talks are an interesting window into how the world that doesn't actually work on scientific principles or doesn't understand the science behind global warming – which is an extremely complicated science – operates. I find it interesting, working in a forest over here, to hear about these things; interesting and funny." As the world fights over how best to tackle climate change – over how, more importantly, to get any of the world's big polluters to do anything differently – a battle about how this global phenomenon should be understood and dealt with takes place in the foothills of the Himalayas. "Darkly funny?" I ask Rai for his assessment. "Yeah, gallows humour." This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Women on the march In the last weekend of November, Sophie Walker took to the stage at the Women's Equality Party's first conference to make her leader's speech and, within a few minutes, began weeping. She cried as she recounted the difficulties of being a single parent trying to access services for her autistic daughter: "Finding out that no one was interested, no one cared, no one welcomed her as person who lived differently." This wasn't just a stray tear, brushed away. Walker (pictured above) seemed to be struggling to go on. The conference held its breath. I gripped the sides of my chair in a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment, thinking this wasn't going to go down well in the media, that she would be mocked for feebleness; what kind of leader, faced with an audience of hundreds, stands in front of them and cries at life's defeats? It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that this had been one of the most significant, and, yes, persuasive moments of the entire event. Walker could hardly have made her point – that her daughter's diagnosis had punctured her own privilege as a white, university-educated journalist (and tall and beautiful, which she did not say but which is nevertheless probably relevant) – more tellingly. Her tears powerfully conveyed her devastation at feeling her child was destined, as she put it, either to be invisible or to be exposed, and the helplessness this induced. The Women's Equality party conference was awash with talk about women 'doing politics differently'. The phrase was trotted out repeatedly, although it wasn't entirely clear what it actually meant. This week, as hundreds of thousands of women prepare to march on Washington on Saturday following the inauguration of Donald Trump (with marches in 200 other US cities and more than 50 others worldwide, including across the UK and in London, where Sophie Walker will be one of the speakers) this seems a good moment to try to pin down whether there is anything new about 21st-century women's activism and, if so, what it is. There are two ways in which women might potentially 'do politics differently': policy, and practice. As far as the former is concerned, the Women's Equality party is promoting broad areas of policy capable of attracting women from across the traditional political spectrum, including closing the gender pay gap, subsidising childcare, ending violence against women, and equal representation in business, politics and the media. Detail and delivery would be more fraught, but, for now, these are things most women can get behind. Both Nicky Morgan, former Conservative Education Secretary, and Sal Brinton, President of the Liberal Democrats, spoke at the conference. It is in its practice, though, that women's activism has real potential to enlarge our understanding of what it means to be political. Among the variety of reasons for Brexit and Trump, rage was right up there. Emotion is back in fashion. The Brexiters and Trump eschewed rational arguments in favour of pleas to feeling. Trump is President of Emotions. (Sad!) Yet we are ill-equipped to understand this outbreak of feeling, as Pankaj Mishra argues in his forthcoming book, The Age of Anger, because our dominant intellectual concepts are incapable of comprehending the role of emotion in politics. Since the Enlightenment, Mishra argues, our political thinking has been ever more tightly gripped by materialist, mechanistic premises – for example by the idea that "humans are essentially rational and motivated by the pursuit of their own interests; that they principally act to maximise personal happiness, rather than on the basis of fear, anger and resentment." Homo economicus , he says, "views the market as the ideal form of human interaction and venerates technological progress and the growth of GDP. All of this is part of the rigid contemporary belief that what counts is only what can be counted and that what cannot be counted – subjective emotions – therefore does not." There is no room in this world view for more complex motivations: vanity, say, or the fear of humiliation. How, then, to comprehend, let alone articulate, the vulnerability, the shame, the loss of identity created by inequality, job losses and purposeless communities? The roiling emotions engendered by capitalism's failure to confer the promised general prosperity cannot be understood when emotion is a thing men are meant to contain, then repudiate. Strongmen leaders do not stand in front of their political parties and weep about their daughters. That sort of thing is for losers. Male valour is about not showing emotional distress. (This is very deeply embedded in our culture: "Thy tears are womanish," Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence scolds Romeo, although Romeo has every right to be upset, because he has just killed a man, who was Juliet's cousin.) Emotion is stigmatised as belonging to lesser, non-normative groups. Women are hysterical. Black men are hypersexual. Homosexuals are unreliably camp. There is no option for the would-be winners, competing to maximise their self-interest, to respond to injury by saying, "Please, that's painful!" – still less by weeping. The emotion is there, nevertheless, metastasising. Since men without the means to express vulnerability cannot mourn frankly their loss of identity as a provider (let alone their disorientation when other groups threaten to undermine their unearned sense of superiority), injured masculinity must disguise itself in images of strength, mastery, honour. Trump himself is a personification of this phenomenon, as Laurie Penny has observed: "At once an emblem of violent, impenetrable masculinity – the nasally-rigid, iron-hearted business Svengali determined to slap America until it stops snivelling – and a byword for hysterical sensitivity, a wailing man-baby with a hair-trigger temper." All this emotion-with-nowhere-to-go was seized on by the Trump and Brexit campaigns. They found a way to channel it, allowing electorates to associate themselves with winning, to bray 'losers' at people they didn't like. It turned out not to matter very much what they were winning at or where it took them. Getting Trump into the White House, like Brexit, was an end in itself, a way of displacing pain, therapeutic. It was also deeply reactionary. The hideous inequalities of global capitalism being what they are, it is hard for the 99 per cent to conceive of themselves becoming winners as things stand – so Trump and Brexit offered instead a return to fantasies of the past. The iconography of Brexit has its roots in Britain's resistance to the Nazis (conveniently overlooking small things like imperial reach and American intervention), while the Trump campaign's "make America great again" offered still more explicit nostalgia for a time when the nation had a common destiny, with white men front and centre. What women's activism might bring to politics is a different sensibility, one that acknowledges that emotions are inevitable, messy – and necessary. There is a hole in politics where opposition used to be and social democracy used to flourish. That is largely because rational arguments, facts, expertise, seem to bear too little relation to the way that many people feel about the world. The liberals' arguments seem to be conducted in a kind of parallel universe, of interest only to those who thrive there. When called to articulate a vision for Britain in Europe, the best Remainers could manage was an abstract account of financial penalties if the electorate didn't do as it was told – which, since it never connected, was easily dismissed as 'Project Fear'. People have not, in fact, lost interest in truth. But first and foremost, they know the truth of their emotional relationship to the world. Liberals and social democrats currently have no way of addressing this. A lot of the time, they appear to be talking gobbledygook. The populist right has found an emotive way to engage electorates by channelling their feelings, often displacing them onto someone else in the process. If you cannot look at yourself in the mirror – because anxiousness makes you feel weak and to be weak is to be a failed human being – you are prey to finding someone else to blame for your loss of dignity. In a world of competition, the only way to self-esteem is to be a winner. And someone else must therefore become the loser. There is an alternative: a politics that begins with the notion that emotions do not have to be repressed or deformed into bigotry and abuse. An understanding of feelings that does not equate weakness with shame, and compassion with maladaptive weakness, is much more likely to suggest solutions than one that denies our emotional lives, most of what makes us human. When people admit to their emotions, they call for empathy; they can galvanise action. "And the government's name for a single mother raising two children and caring for her elderly father?" Sophie Walker asked, in her conference speech, promptly supplying the (clearly absurd) answer: 'Economically inactive'. Walker's single mother is of no importance in the Trump/Farage fantasy land of winning, greatness, the deal, othering the outsider. The unpaid work of caring is about love; it entails vulnerability, which immediately makes it suspect in a world of winning and losing, in which the only permissible emotions are triumph and mocking schadenfreude. The prevailing political mood of the moment is anxiety. "To live a modern life anywhere in the world today," Mark Lilla wrote recently in the New York Times, "subject to perpetual social and technological transformation, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution. Anxiety in the face of this process is now a universal experience, which is why reactionary ideas attract adherents around the world who share little except their sense of historical betrayal." When liberals make pious noises about understanding the anxiety of constituents who have turned away from them, their solution often seems to entail taking on some of the bigotry. You don't have to look very far to find those who believe that feminism is inadequate to the task of humanising politics because it is, in fact, part of the problem. Lilla, in another piece in the New York Times, and Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, have each argued that the policing of language and behaviour – which some call courtesy – has provoked a backlash and so must bear some of the blame for populism. The logical extension of this argument is that feminists, along with Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ activists and other assorted 'snowflakes', need to take a step back and think about just how much damage they're doing. The problem is that this assumes white men's lives are neutral territory around which the common interest can coalesce. It is, in other words, male identity politics. "There has been a massive backlash by white men," Sophie Walker told me, at the WE party headquarters in Bermondsey, a few weeks after the conference speech. "We are living out the identity politics of the straight white man right now." If we are not to face a breakdown to essentialist tribal identities of gender and race, people have to find a way of articulating feelings of distress in a way that doesn't humiliate them. If men cannot face their anxiety, it will be denied, and then absolutely nothing will be done to alleviate it; there will be a privatisation of misery. There are structural reasons for the explosion of mental health disorders in advanced economies, for the opiate addiction in the rustbelt, the epidemic of distress among young people, other sorts of self-harm. But if we can't acknowledge the underlying dread and helplessness that people experience in the face of a world controlled by global finance capital and incomprehensible algorithms, individuals will continue to be stigmatised as failing. Either you will be a winner, an entrepreneurial individual competing freely in the market, deflecting your distress by manning up, lashing out; or your inchoate feelings of desperation will be – sorry – your problem, mate. A female sensibility in politics is not, it probably needs saying, antithetical to reason, even though feeling and reason are often posited as opposites. Plato contrasted the wild horse of passion and the wise charioteer of reason (his point being, of course, that they needed each other). Jane Austen would have had no plots without the frequent difficulty human beings have in accommodating desire and wisdom: success, as she repeatedly shows, lies in the reconciliation of sense and sensibility. Such an accommodation requires self-examination, generosity of spirit, fidelity to self, and hard thinking. But first and foremost, it takes an honesty about feeling. I used to get mildly irritated when feminists focused too hard on female representation, when there seemed so many other pressing things to talk about, as if vaginas alone made a difference. And it is true that there is a glass-ceiling feminism that takes little heed of women for whom race, class, disability and/or sexuality intersect to intensify and redouble gender discrimination. But sheer numbers of women do make a difference. Nicky Morgan notes that women in parliament are more inclined to collaborate across party than men. Sal Brinton, who has had a lifetime of being a lone woman on decision-making bodies, says that when women get to 40 per cent in a meeting or on a board, the language changes. There's a different way of conducting business, a different sense of how to move things on. In a hall overwhelmingly dominated by women, it is possible for a leader to cry and everyone to be on her side. For no one to think (after a moment of adjustment from unreconstructed be-more-like-a-man feminists like me) that you're weak. Over the coming months and years, progressives are going to have to grapple with what kind of emotional appeal they can make beyond the populists' exploitative deformation of feeling. The task will be to retrieve emotion from its current co-option into a minatory, ultimately self-defeating way of looking at the world. Women are not (of course) alone in identifying the need for soul in politics. Robert Musil and Stephen Toulmin, among others, have identified that there was a highly rationalistic and scientific turn in Enlightenment thinking after Descartes and Newton. Had the Enlightenment developed instead out of the vision of Montaigne, or Shakespeare, the thinking goes, it would have made more room for kindness, and would have given us a fuller, more complex and nuanced account of human experience. In the current destabilised times, people are returning to their ideas. Perhaps women's activism can give us all a way into reconnecting with a different, more generous apprehension of the Enlightenment. By caring about caring, for example – not as an abstract problem that acts as a brake on the economy, but because caring is about love, family, community, humanity. By reminding men that it is possible to acknowledge pain and survive, and then get stronger. As the political ground shifts under our feet and old allegiances and responses turn out to be no use to us, we are going to need to find a different language of politics. And the language of women is where we should start. Top image: Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party, speaking at the party's first annual conference, in Manchester, November 2016 (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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Open Access: Casualties Will a general shift to OA leave casualties? For example, will rising levels of green OA trigger cancellations of toll-access journals? This question matters for those publishers (not all publishers) who fear the answer is yes and for those activists (not all activists) who hope the answer is yes. So far, unfortunately, it doesn’t have a simple yes-or-no answer, and most discussions replace evidence with fearful or hopeful predictions. The primary drivers of green OA are policies at universities and funding agencies. Remember, all university policies allow publishers to protect themselves at will. (See section 4.1 on policies.) For example, universities with loophole or deposit mandates will not provide green OA when publishers do not allow it. Universities with Harvard-style rights-retention mandates will not provide OA when authors obtain waivers or when publishers require authors to obtain waivers as a condition of publication. Hence, publishers who worry about the effect of university OA policies on subscriptions have the remedy in their own hands. Faculty needn’t paternalize publishers by voting down OA policies when publishers can protect themselves whenever they see the need to do so. The experience at Harvard since February 2008 is that very few publishers see the need to do so. Fewer than a handful systematically require waivers from Harvard authors. This chapter, then, focuses on the strongest green OA mandates at funding agencies, like the Wellcome Trust and NIH, which allow no opt-outs for publishers or grantees. Will strong green OA policies of that kind trigger cancellations of toll-access journals? Here are 10 parts of any complete answer. 1. Nobody knows yet how green OA policies will affect journal subscriptions. Rising levels of green OA may trigger toll-access journal cancellations, or they may not. So far they haven’t. 2. The evidence from physics is the most relevant. Physics has the highest levels and longest history of green OA. The evidence from physics to date is that high levels of green OA don’t cause journal cancellations. On the contrary, the relationship between arXiv (the OA repository for physics) and toll-access physics journals is more symbiotic than antagonistic. Physicists have been self-archiving since 1991, far longer than in any other field. In some subfields, such as particle physics, the rate of OA archiving approaches 100 percent, far higher than in any other field. If high-volume green OA caused journal cancellations, we’d see the effect first in physics. But it hasn’t happened. Two leading publishers of physics journals, the American Physical Society (APS) and Institute of Physics (IOP), have publicly acknowledged that they’ve seen no cancellations attributable to OA archiving. In fact, the APS and IOP have not only made peace with arXiv but now accept submissions from it and even host their own mirrors of it. 3. Other fields may not behave like physics. We won’t know more until the levels of green OA in other fields approach those in physics. It would definitely help to understand why the experience in physics has gone as it has and how far it might predict the experience in other fields. But so far it’s fair to say that we don’t know all the variables and that publishers who oppose green OA mandates are not among those showing a serious interest in them. When publisher lobbyists argue that high-volume green OA will undermine toll-access journal subscriptions, they don’t offer evidence, don’t acknowledge the countervailing evidence from physics, don’t rebut the evidence from physics, and don’t qualify their own conclusions in light of it. They would act more like scientific publishers if they acknowledged the evidence from physics and then argued, as well as they could, either that the experience in physics will change or that fields other than physics will have a different experience. An October 2004 editorial in The Lancet (an Elsevier journal) called on the publishing lobby to do better. “[A]s editors of a journal that publishes research funded by the NIH, we disagree with [Association of American Publishers President Patricia Schroeder’s] central claim. Widening access to research [through green OA mandates] is unlikely to bring the edifice of scientific publishing crashing down. Schroeder provides no evidence that it would do so; she merely asserts the threat. This style of rebuttal will not do. . . .” For more than eight years, green OA mandates have applied to research in many fields outside physics. These mandates are natural experiments and we’re still monitoring their effects. At Congressional hearings in 2008 and 2010, legislators asked publishers directly whether green OA was triggering cancellations. In both cases, publishers pointed to decreased downloads but not to increased cancellations. 4. There is evidence that green OA decreases downloads from publishers’ web sites. When users know about OA and toll-access editions of the same article, many will prefer to click through to the OA edition, either because they aren’t affiliated with a subscribing institution or because authentication is a hassle. Moreover, when users find an OA edition, most stop looking. But decreased downloads are not the same thing as decreased or canceled subscriptions. Moreover, decreased downloads of toll-access editions from publisher web sites are not the same thing as decreased downloads overall. No one suggests that green OA leads to decreased overall downloads, that is, fewer readers and less reading. On the contrary, the same evidence suggesting that OA increases citation impact also suggests that it increases readers and reading. 5. Most publishers voluntarily permit green OA. Supplementing the natural experiments of green OA mandates are the natural experiments of publishers who voluntarily permit green OA. The Nature Publishing Group is more conservative than most toll-access publishers by requiring a six-month embargo on green OA, but more progressive than most by positively encouraging green OA. NPG reported the latest results of its multidisciplinary natural experiment in January 2011: “We have, to date, found author self-archiving compatible with subscription business models, and so we have been actively encouraging self-archiving since 2005.” This or something similar to it must be the experience of the majority of toll-access publishers who voluntarily permit green OA. Even if they don’t actively encourage green OA, most permit it without embargo. If they found that it triggered cancellations, they would stop. 6. Green OA mandates leave standing at least four library incentives to maintain their subscriptions to toll-access journals. Even the strongest no-loophole, no-waiver policies preserve incentives to maintain toll-access journal subscriptions. First, all funder OA mandates include an embargo period to protect publishers. For example, the OA mandates at the Research Councils UK allow an embargo of up to six months after publication. The NIH allows an embargo of up to twelve months. Libraries wanting to provide immediate access will still have an incentive to subscribe. Second, all funder OA mandates apply to the final version of the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript, not to the published version. If the journal provides copyediting after peer review, then the policies do not apply to the copyedited version, let alone to the formatted, paginated published edition. Libraries wanting to provide access to copyedited published editions will still have an incentive to subscribe. The purpose of these two policy provisions is precisely to protect publishers against cancellations. They are deliberate concessions to publishers, adopted voluntarily by funding agencies as compromises with the public interest in immediate OA to the best editions. When we put the two together, we see that funder-mandated OA copies of peer-reviewed manuscripts won’t compete with toll-access copies of the published editions for six to twelve months, and there will never be OA copies of the more desirable published editions unless publishers voluntarily allow them. Publishers retain life-of-copyright exclusivity on the published editions. Even if OA archiving does eventually erode subscriptions outside physics, publishers have longer and better protection from these effects than their lobbyists ever acknowledge. Third, funder OA mandates only apply to research articles, not to the many other kinds of content published in scholarly journals, such as letters, editorials, review articles, book reviews, announcements, news, conference information, and so on. Libraries wanting to provide access to these other kinds of content will still have an incentive to subscribe. Fourth, funder OA mandates only apply to articles arising from research funded by the mandating agency. Very few journals publish nothing but articles from a single funder, or even from a set of funders all of whom have OA mandates. Libraries wanting to provide access to all the research articles in a journal, regardless of the sources of funding, will still have an incentive to subscribe. This incentive will weaken as more and more funders adopt OA mandates, but we’re very far from universal funder mandates. As we get closer, unfunded research will still fall outside this category and the three other incentives above will still stand. The Association of College and Research Libraries addressed subscription incentives in a 2004 open letter on the NIH policy: “We wish to emphasize, above all, that academic libraries will not cancel journal subscriptions as a result of this plan. . . . Even if libraries wished to consider the availability of NIH-funded articles when making journal cancellation decisions, they would have no reasonable way of determining what articles in specific journals would become openly accessible after the embargo period.” 7. Some studies bear on the question of whether increased OA archiving will increase journal cancellations. In a 2006 study from the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), Chris Beckett and Simon Inger asked 400 librarians about the relative weight of different factors in their decisions to cancel subscriptions. Other things being equal, the librarians preferred free content to priced content and short embargoes to longer ones. Publishers interpret this to mean that the rise of OA archiving will cause cancellations. The chief flaw with the study is its artificiality. For example, the survey did not ask about specific journals by name but only about resources with abstractly stipulated levels of quality. It also disregarded faculty input on cancellation decisions when all librarians acknowledge that faculty input is decisive. The result was a study of hypothetical preferences, not actual cancellation decisions. A less hypothetical study was commissioned by publishers themselves in the same year. From the summary: The three most important factors used to determine journals for cancellation, in declining order of importance, are that the faculty no longer require it . . . , usage and price. Next, availability of the content via open access (OA) archives and availability via aggregators were ranked equal fourth, but some way behind the first three factors. The journal’s impact factor and availability via delayed OA were ranked relatively unimportant. . . . With regard to OA archives, there was a great deal of support for the idea that they would not directly impact journal subscriptions. In short, toll-access journals have more to fear from their own price increases than from rising levels of green OA. Publishers who keep raising their prices aggravate the access problem for researchers and aggravate the sustainability problem for themselves. If the same publishers blame green OA and lobby against green OA policies, then they obstruct the solution for researchers and do very little to improve their own sustainability. 8. OA may increase submissions and subscriptions. Some subscription journals have found that OA after an embargo period, even a very short one like two months, actually increases submissions and subscriptions. For example, this was the experience of the American Society for Cell Biology and its journal, Molecular Biology of the Cell. Medknow saw its submissions and subscriptions increase when it began offering unembargoed full-text editions of its journals alongside its toll-access print journals. Hindawi Publishing saw its submissions rise steadily after it converted all its peer-reviewed journals to OA in 2007. Looking back on several years of rapidly growing submissions, company founder and CEO Ahmed Hindawi said in January 2010, “It is clear now more than ever that our open access conversion . . . was the best management decision we have taken. . . .” 9. Some publishers fear that green OA will increase pressure to convert to gold OA. Some publishers fear that rising levels of green OA will not only trigger toll-access journal cancellations but also increase pressure to convert to gold OA. (Likewise, some OA activists hope for this outcome.) There are two responses to this two-fold fear. The fear of toll-access cancellations disregards the relevant evidence in points 1–8 above. The fear of conversion to gold OA also disregards relevant evidence, such as Ahmed Hindawi’s testimony above, and the testimony of Springer CEO Derk Haank. In 2008 when Springer bought BioMed Central and became the world’s largest OA publisher, Haank said: “[W]e see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade.” (Also see chapter 7 on economics.) Publishers inexperienced with gold OA needn’t defer to publishers with more experience, but they should at least study them. In fact, OA publishing might be more sustainable than TA publishing, as toll-access prices and the volume of research both grow faster than library budgets. (See section 2.1 on problems.) If publishers acknowledge that gold OA can be sustainable, and even profitable, and merely wish to avoid making lower margins than they make today, then their objection takes on a very different color. They’re not at risk of insolvency, just reduced profits, and they’re not asserting a need for self-protection, just an entitlement to current levels of profit. There’s no reason for public funding agencies acting in the public interest, or private funders acting for charitable purposes, to compromise their missions in order to satisfy that sense of publisher entitlement. 10. Green OA policies are justified even if they do create risks for toll-access journals. If we’re only interested in the effect of rising levels of green OA on toll-access publishers, then we can stop at points 1–9. But if we’re interested in good policy, then we must add one more factor: Even if green OA does eventually threaten toll-access journal subscriptions, green OA policies are still justified. I won’t elaborate this point here, since it takes us beyond the topic of casualties to the full case for OA, which is spread throughout the rest of the book. But here’s one way to put the debate in perspective: There are good reasons to want to know whether rising levels of green OA will trigger cancellations of toll-access journals, and perhaps even to modify our policies in light of what we learn. But there are no good reasons to put the thriving of incumbent toll-access journals and publishers ahead of the thriving of research itself.

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Open Access: Policies 4.1 OA Policies at Funding Agencies and Universities Authors control the volume and growth of OA. They decide whether to submit their work to OA journals (gold OA), whether to deposit their work in OA repositories (green OA), and how to use their copyrights. But scholarly authors are still largely unfamiliar with their OA options. It’s pointless to appeal to them as a bloc because they don’t act as a bloc. It’s not hard to persuade or even excite them once we catch their attention, but because they are so anarchical, overworked, and preoccupied, it’s hard to catch their attention. Fortunately, funding agencies and universities are discovering their own interests in fostering OA. These nonprofit institutions make it their mission to advance research and to make that research as useful and widely available as possible. Their money frees researchers to do their work and avoid the need to tie their income to the popularity of their ideas. Above all, these institutions are in an unparalleled position to influence author decisions. Today, more than fifty funding agencies and more than one hundred universities have adopted strong OA policies. Each one depends on the primacy of author decisions. One kind of policy, better than nothing, requests or encourages OA. A stronger kind of policy requires OA or makes it the default for new work. These stronger policies are usually called OA mandates and I’ll use that term for lack of a better one (but see section 4.2 on how it’s misleading). Request or encouragement policies These merely ask faculty to make their work OA, or recommend OA for their new work. Sometimes they’re called resolutions or pledges rather than policies. Encouragement policies can target green and gold OA equally. By contrast, mandates only make sense for green OA, at least today when OA journals constitute only about one-quarter of peer-reviewed journals. A gold OA mandate would put most peer-reviewed journals off-limits and seriously limit faculty freedom to submit their work to the journals of their choice. This problem doesn’t arise for green OA mandates. Fortunately, this is well understood. There are no gold OA mandates anywhere; all OA mandates are green. Unfortunately, however, many people mistakenly believe that all OA is gold OA and therefore mistake proposed green OA mandates for proposed gold OA mandates and raise objections that would only apply to gold OA mandates. But as more academics understand the green/gold distinction, and understand that well-written green OA mandates are compatible with academic freedom, more institutions are adopting green OA mandates, almost always at the initiative of faculty themselves. At universities, there are roughly three approaches to green OA mandates: Loophole mandates These require green OA except when the author’s publisher doesn’t allow it. Deposit mandates These require deposit in an OA repository as soon as the article is accepted for publication, but they separate the timing of deposit from the timing of OA. If the author’s publisher doesn’t allow OA, then these policies keep the deposited article dark or non-OA. If the publisher allows OA, immediately or after some embargo, then the deposit becomes OA as soon as the permission kicks in. Because most publishers allow OA on some timetable, this method will provide OA to most new work in due time. Deposit mandates generally depend on publisher permission for OA, just like loophole mandates. The difference is that they require deposit even when they can’t obtain permission for OA. Rights-retention mandates These require deposit in an OA repository as soon as the article is accepted for publication, just like deposit mandates. But they add a method to secure permission for making the deposit OA. There’s more than one way to secure that permission. At the Wellcome Trust and NIH, which pioneered this approach for funding agencies, when grantees publish articles based on their funded research they must retain the nonexclusive right to authorize OA through a repository. At Harvard, which pioneered this approach for universities, faculty members vote to give the university a standing nonexclusive right (among other nonexclusive rights) to make their future work OA through the institutional repository. When faculty publish articles after that, the university already has the needed permission, and faculty needn’t take any special steps to retain rights or negotiate with publishers. Nor need they wait for the publisher’s embargo to run. Harvard-style policies also give faculty a waiver option, allowing them to opt out of the grant of permission to the university, though not out of the deposit requirement. When faculty members obtain waivers for given works, then Harvard-style mandates operate like deposit mandates and the works remain dark deposits until the institution has permission to make them OA. Many OA policies are crossbreeds rather than pure types, but all the policies I’ve seen are variations on these four themes. First note that none of the three “mandates” absolutely requires OA. Loophole mandates allow some work to escape through the loophole. Deposit mandates allow some deposited work to remain dark (non-OA), by following publisher preferences. Rights-retention mandates with waiver options allow some work to remain dark, by following author preferences. Loophole and deposit policies defer to publishers for permissions, while rights-retention policies obtain permission from authors before they transfer rights to publishers. For loophole and deposit policies, permission is contingent, because some publishers are willing and some are not. For rights-retention policies, permission is assured, at least initially or by default, although authors may opt out for any publication. When loophole policies can’t provide OA, covered works needn’t make it to the repository even as dark deposits. When deposit and rights-retention policies can’t provide OA, at least they require dark deposit for the texts, and OA for the metadata (information about author, title, date, and so on). Releasing the metadata makes even a dark deposit visible to readers and search engines. Moreover, many repositories support an email-request button for works on dark deposit. The button enables a reader to submit a one-click request for a full-text email copy and enables the author to grant or deny the request with a one-click response. We could say that rights-retention policies require OA except when authors opt out, or that they simply shift the default to OA. Those are two ways of saying the same thing because, either way, faculty remain free to decide for or against OA for each of their publications. Preserving this freedom and making it conspicuous help muster faculty support, indeed, unanimous faculty votes. Because shifting the default is enough to change behavior on a large scale, waiver options don’t significantly reduce the volume of OA. At Harvard the waiver rate is less than 5 percent, and at MIT it’s less than 2 percent. Loophole policies and rights-retention policies both offer opt-outs. But loophole policies give the opt-out to publishers and rights-retention policies give it to authors. The difference is significant because many more authors than publishers want OA for research articles. Many institutions adopt loophole policies because they believe a blanket exemption for dissenting publishers is the only way to avoid copyright problems. But that is not true. Deposit policies don’t make works OA until publishers allow OA, and rights-retention policies close the loophole and obtain permission directly from authors at a time when authors are the copyright holders. OA policies from funding agencies are very much like OA policies from universities. They can encourage green and gold OA, or they can require green OA. If they require green OA, they can do so in one of the three ways above. If there’s a difference, it’s that when funders adopt a rights-retention mandate, they typically don’t offer waiver options. On the contrary, the Wellcome Trust and NIH require their grantees to make their work OA through a certain OA repository on a certain timetable and to retain the right to authorize that OA. If a given publisher will not allow grantees to comply with their prior funding agreement, then grantees must look for another publisher. There are two reasons why these strong funder policies don’t infringe faculty freedom to submit work to their journals of their choice. First, researchers needn’t seek funds from these funders. When they choose to do so, then they agree to the OA provisions, just as they agree to the other terms and conditions of the grant. The OA “mandate” is a condition on a voluntary contract, not an unconditional requirement. It’s a reasonable condition as well, since public funders, like the NIH, disburse public money in the public interest, and private funders, like the Wellcome Trust, disburse charitable money for charitable purposes. To my knowledge, no researchers have refused to apply for Wellcome or NIH funds because of the OA condition, even when they plan to publish in OA-averse journals. The OA condition benefits authors and has not been a deal-breaker. Second, virtually all publishers accommodate these policies. For example, no surveyed publishers anywhere refuse to publish work by NIH-funded authors on account of the agency’s OA mandate. Hence, in practice grantees may still submit work to the journals of their choice, even without a waiver option to accommodate holdout publishers. We should never forget that most toll-access journals already allow green OA and that a growing number of high-quality, high-prestige peer-reviewed journal are gold OA. From one point of view, we don’t need OA mandates when authors already plan to publish in one of those journals. But sometimes toll-access journals change their positions on green OA. Sometimes authors don’t get around to making their work green OA even when their journals allow it. And sometimes authors don’t publish in one of those journals. The final rationale for green OA mandates, then, is for institutions to bring about OA for their entire research output, regardless of how publishers might alter their policies, regardless of author inertia, and regardless of the journals in which faculty or grantees choose to publish. Green OA mandates don’t assure OA to the entire research output of a university or funding agency, for the same reason that they don’t require OA without qualification. But implementing them provides OA to a much larger percentage of the research output than was already headed toward OA journals or OA repositories, and does so while leaving authors free to submit their work to the journals of their choice. I’ve only tried to give a rough taxonomy of OA policies and their supporting arguments. For detailed recommendations on OA policy provisions, and specific arguments for them, see my 2009 analysis of policy options for funding agencies and universities. I’ve also focused here on OA policies for peer-reviewed research articles. Many universities have adopted OA mandates for theses and dissertations, and many funder OA policies also cover datasets. A growing number of universities supplement OA mandates for articles with a sensible and effective policy to assure compliance: When faculty come up for promotion or tenure, the review committee will only consider journal articles on deposit in the institutional repository. 4.2 Digression on the Word “Mandate” The strongest OA policies use words like “must” or “shall” and require or seem to require OA. They’re commonly called OA “mandates.” But all three varieties of university “mandate” above show why the term is misleading. Loophole mandates don’t require OA without qualification: when publishers dissent, articles are either not deposited in the repository or not made OA. Deposit mandates don’t require OA without qualification: when publishers dissent, articles are deposited in a repository but are not made OA. Rights-retention mandates with waiver options don’t require OA without qualification: authors may obtain waivers and sometimes do. I haven’t seen a university OA “mandate” anywhere without at least one of these three kinds of flexibility. That’s the main reason why no university policies require OA without qualification. There are a few more. First, as Harvard’s Stuart Shieber frequently argues, even the strongest university policies can’t make tenured faculty comply. Second, as I’ve frequently argued, successful policies are implemented through expectations, education, incentives, and assistance, not coercion. Third, even the strongest policies—even the no-loophole, no-deference, no-waiver policies at the Wellcome Trust and NIH—make OA a condition on a voluntary contract. No policy anywhere pretends to impose an unconditional OA requirement, and it’s hard to imagine how any policy could even try. (“You must make your work OA even if you don’t work for us or use our funds”?) Unfortunately, we don’t have a good vocabulary for policies that use mandatory language while deferring to third-person dissents or offering first-person opt-outs. Nor do we have a good vocabulary for policies that use mandatory language and replace enforcement with compliance-building through expectations, education, incentives, and assistance. The word “mandate” is not a very good fit for policies like this, but neither is any other English word. By contrast, we do have a good word for policies that use mandatory language for those who agree to be bound. We call them “contracts.” While “contract” is short, accurate, and unfrightening, it puts the accent on the author’s consent to be bound. That’s often illuminating, but just as often we want to put the accent on the content’s destiny to become OA. For that purpose, “mandate” has become the term of art, for better or worse. I use “mandate” with reluctance because it can frighten some of the people I’m trying to persuade and can give rise to misunderstandings about the policies behind the label. When we have time and space for longer phrases, we can talk about “putting an OA condition” on research grants, in the case of NIH-style policies, or “shifting the default to OA” for faculty research, in the case of Harvard-style policies. These longer expressions are more accurate and less frightening. However, sometimes we need a shorthand term, and we need a term that draws an appropriately sharp contrast with policies that merely request or encourage OA. If anyone objects that a policy containing mandatory language and a waiver option isn’t really a “mandate,” I won’t disagree. On the contrary, I applaud them for recognizing a nuance which too many others overlook. (It’s depressing how many PhDs can read a policy with mandatory language and a waiver option, notice the mandatory language, overlook the waiver option, and then cite the lack of flexibility as an objection.) But denying that a policy is a mandate can create its own kinds of misunderstanding. In the United States, citizens called for jury duty must appear, even if many can claim exemptions and go home again. We can say that jury duty with exemptions isn’t really a “duty,” provided we don’t conclude that it’s merely a request and encouragement. Finally, a common misunderstanding deliberately promulgated by some publishers is that OA must be “mandated” because faculty don’t want it. This position gets understandable but regrettable mileage from the word “mandate.” It also overlooks decisive counter-evidence that we’ve had in hand since 2004. Alma Swan’s empirical studies of researcher attitudes show that an overwhelming majority of researchers would “willingly” comply with a mandatory OA policy from their funder or employer. The most recent evidence of faculty willingness is the stunning series of strong OA policies adopted by unanimous faculty votes. (When is the last time you heard of a unanimous faculty vote for anything, let alone anything of importance?) As recently as 2007, speculation that we’d soon see more than two dozen unanimous faculty votes for OA policies would have been dismissed as wishful thinking. But now that the evidence lies before us, what looks like wishful thinking is the publishing lobby’s idea that OA must be mandated because faculty don’t want it. Finally, the fact that faculty vote unanimously for strong OA policies is a good reason to keep looking for a better word than “mandate.” At least it’s a good reason to look past the colloquial implications of the term to the policies themselves and the players who drafted and adopted them. Since 2008, most OA “mandates” at universities have been self-imposed by faculty. 4.3 Digression on the Historical Timing of OA Policies Some kinds of strong OA policy that are politically unattainable or unwise today may become attainable and wise in the future. Here are three examples. Today, a libre green mandate (say, one giving users the right to copy and redistribute, not just access for reading) would face serious publisher resistance. Even if the policy included rights retention and didn’t depend on publishers for permissions, publisher resistance would still matter because publishers possess—and ought to possess—the right to refuse to publish any work for any reason. They could refuse to publish authors bound by a libre green policy, or they could insist on a waiver from the policy as a condition of publication. Policies triggering rejections hurt authors, and policies driving up waiver rates don’t do much to help OA. However, publisher resistance might diminish as the ratio of OA publishers to toll-access publishers tilts toward OA, as spontaneous author submissions shift toward OA journals, or as the number of institutions with libre green mandates makes resistance more costly than accommodation for publishers. When OA policies are toothless, few in number, or concentrated in small institutions, then they must accommodate publishers in order to avoid triggering rejections and hurting authors. But as policies grow in number, scope, and strength, the situation could flip over, and publishers will have to accommodate OA policies in order to avoid hurting themselves by rejecting too many good authors for reasons unrelated to the quality of their work. Today, a gold OA mandate would limit faculty freedom to submit work to the journals of their choice. But that’s because today only about 25 percent of peer-reviewed journals are OA. As this percentage grows, then a gold OA mandate’s encroachment on academic freedom shrinks. At some point even the most zealous defenders of faculty freedom may decide that the encroachment is negligible. In principle the encroachment could be zero, though of course when the encroachment is zero, and gold OA mandates are harmless, then gold OA mandates would also be unnecessary. Today, faculty voting for a rights-retention OA mandate want a waiver option, and when the option is available their votes tend to be overwhelming or unanimous. But there are several circumstances that might make it attractive for faculty to abolish waiver options or make waivers harder to obtain. One is a shift in faculty perspective that makes access to research more urgent than indulging publishers who erect access barriers. Another is a significant rise in publisher acceptance of green OA, which gives virtually all authors—rather than just most—blanket permission for green OA. In the first case, faculty might “vote with their submissions” and steer clear of publishers who don’t allow author-initiated green OA. In the second case, faculty would virtually never encounter such publishers. In the first case, they’d seldom want waivers, and the second they’d seldom need waivers. It’s understandable that green gratis mandates are spreading faster than green libre mandates, that green mandates in general are spreading faster than gold mandates, and that rights-retention policies with waiver options are spreading faster than rights-retention policies without waivers. However, there is modest growth on one of these fronts: green libre mandates. The case against these three kinds of OA policy is time-sensitive, not permanent. It’s circumstantial, and circumstances are changing. But the strategy for institutions wanting to remove access barriers to research is unchanging: they should adopt the strongest policies they can today and watch for the moment when they could strengthen them. As researchers become more familiar with OA, as more institutions adopt OA policies, as more new literature is covered by strong OA policies, as more toll-access journals convert to OA, as more toll-access journals accommodate OA mandates without converting, and even as more OA journals shift from gratis to libre, institutions will be able strengthen their OA policies without increasing publisher-controlled rejection rates or author-controlled waiver rates. They should watch the shifting balance of power and seize opportunities to strengthen their policies. The moments of opportunity will not be obvious. They will not be highlighted by objective evidence alone and will call for some self-fulfilling leadership. Institutional policy-makers will have to assess not only the climate created by existing policies, and existing levels of support, but also the likely effects of their own actions. Every strong, new policy increases the likelihood of publisher accommodation, and when enough universities and funders have policies, all publishers will have to accommodate them. In that sense, every strong new policy creates some of the conditions of its own success. Every institution adopting a new policy brings about OA for the research it controls and makes the way easier for other institutions behind it. Like many other policy issues, this is one on which it is easier to follow than to lead, and we already have a growing number of leaders. A critical mass is growing and every policy is an implicit invitation to other institutions to gain strength through common purpose and help accelerate publisher adaptation.

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Open Access: Economics Many publishers who oppose OA concede that OA is better for research and researchers than toll access. They merely object that we can’t pay for it. But we can pay for it. The first major study of the economic impact of OA policies was conducted by John Houghton and Peter Sheehan in 2006. Using conservative estimates that a nation’s gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) brings social returns of 50 percent, and that OA increases access and efficiency by 5 percent, Houghton and Sheehan calculated that a transition to OA would not only pay for itself, but add $1.7 billion/year to the UK economy and $16 billion/year to the U.S. economy. A later study focusing on Australia used the more conservative estimate that GERD brings social returns of only 25 percent, but still found that the bottom-line economic benefits of OA for publicly funded research were 51 times greater than the costs. Independent confirmation of Houghton’s results came in a major study released in April 2011, commissioned by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee, Publishing Research Consortium, Research Information Network, Research Libraries UK, and the Wellcome Trust. After studying five scenarios for improving research access, it concluded that green and gold OA “offer the greatest potential to policy-makers in promoting access. Both have positive, and potentially high, BCRs [benefit-cost ratios]. . . .” The same study noted that “the infrastructure for Green [OA] has largely already been built” and therefore that “increasing access by this route is especially cost-effective. . . .” I can add that repositories scale up more easily than journals to capture unmet demand, and that depositing in a repository costs the depositor nothing. For all these reasons, I’ll focus in this chapter on how to pay for gold OA (journals), not how to pay for green OA (repositories). Before turning to gold OA, however, I should note that there are widely varying estimates in the literature on what it costs a university to run an institutional repository. The divergence reflects the fact that repositories can serve many different purposes, and that some repositories serve more of them than others. If the minimum purpose is to host OA copies of faculty articles, and if faculty deposit their own articles, then the cost is minimal. But a repository is a general-purpose tool, and once launched there are good reasons for it to take on other responsibilities, such as long-term preservation, assisting faculty with digitization, permissions, and deposits, and hosting many other sorts of content, such as theses and dissertations, books or book chapters, conference proceedings, courseware, campus publications, digitized special collections, and administrative records. If the average repository is a significant expense today, the reason is that the average repository is doing significantly more than the minimum. OA journals pay their bills the way broadcast television and radio stations do—not through advertising or pledge drives, but through a simple generalization on advertising and pledge drives. Those with an interest in disseminating the content pay the production costs upfront so that access can be free of charge for everyone with the right equipment. Elsewhere I’ve called this the “some pay for all” model. Some OA journals have a subsidy from a university, library, foundation, society, museum, or government agency. Other OA journals charge a publication fee on accepted articles, to be paid by the author or the author’s sponsor (employer or funder). The party paying the subsidy or fee covers the journal’s expenses and readers pay nothing. OA journals that charge publication fees tend to waive them in cases of economic hardship, and journals with institutional subsidies tend not to charge publication fees. OA journals can diversify their funding and get by on lower subsidies, or lower fees, if they also have revenue from print editions, advertising, priced add-ons, or auxiliary services. Some institutions and consortia arrange fee discounts, or purchase annual memberships that include fee waivers or discounts for all affiliated researchers. Models that work well in some fields and nations may not work as well in others. No one claims that one size fits all. There’s still room for creativity in finding ways to pay the costs of a peer-reviewed OA journal, and many smart and motivated people are exploring different possibilities. Journals announce new variations almost every week, and we’re far from exhausting our cleverness and imagination. Green OA may suffer from invisibility, but gold OA does not. On the contrary, researchers who don’t know about OA repositories still understand that there are OA journals. Sometimes the visibility gap is so large that researchers, journalists, and policy-makers conclude that all OA is gold OA (see section 3.1 on green and gold OA). As a result, most researchers who think about the benefits of OA think about the benefits of gold OA. Here, at least, the news is good. The most comprehensive survey to date shows that an overwhelming 89 percent of researchers from all fields believe that OA journals are beneficial to their fields. Apart from the myth that all OA is gold OA, the most common myth about gold OA is that all OA journals charge “author fees” or use an “author-pays” business model. There are three mistakes here. The first is to assume that there is only one business model for OA journals, when there are many. The second is to assume that charging an upfront fee means authors are the ones expected to pay it. The third is to assume that all or even most OA journals charge upfront fees. In fact, most OA journals (70 percent) charge no upfront or author-side fees at all. By contrast, most toll-access journals (75 percent) do charge author-side fees. Moreover, even within the minority of fee-based OA journals, only 12 percent of those authors end up paying the fees out of pocket. Almost 90 percent of the time, the fees at fee-based journals are waived or paid by sponsors on behalf of authors. Terminology The terms “author fees” and “author pays” are specious and damaging. They’re false for the majority of OA journals, which charge no fees. They’re also misleading even for fee-based OA journals, where nearly nine times out of ten the fees are not paid by authors themselves. It’s more accurate to speak of “publication fees,” “processing fees,” or “author-side fees.” The first two don’t specify the payor, and the third merely specifies that the payment comes from the author side of the transaction, rather than the reader side, without implying that it must come from authors themselves. The false beliefs that most OA journals charge author-side fees and that most toll-access journals don’t have caused several kinds of harm. They scare authors away from OA journals. They support the misconception that gold OA excludes indigent authors. When we add in the background myth that all OA is gold OA, this misconception suggests that OA as such—and not just gold OA—excludes indigent authors. These false beliefs also support the insinuation that OA journals are more likely than non-OA journals to compromise on peer review. But if charging author-side fees for accepted papers really creates an incentive to lower standards, in order to rake in more fees, then most toll-access journals are guilty and most OA journals are not. In fact, however, when OA journals do charge author-side fees, they create firewalls between their financial and editorial operations. For example, most fee-based OA journals will waive their fees in cases of economic hardship, and take pains to prevent editors and referees engaged in peer review from knowing whether or not an author has requested a fee waiver. By contrast, at toll-access journals levying author-side page or color charges, editors generally know that accepted papers will entail revenue. The false belief that most OA journals charge author-side fees also infects studies in which authors misinform survey subjects before surveying them. In effect: “At OA journals, authors pay to be published; now let me ask you a series of questions about your attitude toward OA journals.” Finally, this false belief undermines calculations about who would bear the financial brunt if we made a general transition from toll-access journals to OA journals. A handful of studies have calculated that after a general conversion of peer-reviewed journals to OA, high-output universities would pay more in author-side fees than they pay now in subscriptions. These calculations make at least two assumptions unjustified by present facts or trends: that all OA journals would charge fees, and that all fees would be paid by universities. There are two kinds of OA journals, full and hybrid. Full OA journals provide OA to all their research articles. Hybrid OA journals provide OA to some and toll-access to others, when the choice is the author’s rather than the editor’s. Most hybrid OA journals charge a publication fee for the OA option. Authors who can find the money get immediate OA, and those who can’t or prefer not to, get toll access. (Many hybrid OA journals provide OA to all their articles after some time period, such as a year.) Some hybrid OA journals promise to reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake of the OA option, that is, to charge subscribers only for the toll-access articles. But most hybrid journal publishers don’t make this promise and “double dip” by charging subscription fees and publication fees for the same OA articles. Hybrid OA is very low-risk for publishers. If the OA option has low uptake, the publisher loses nothing and still has subscription revenue. If it has high uptake, the publisher has subscription revenue for the conventional articles, publication fees for the OA articles, and sometimes both at once for the OA articles. Hence, the model has spread far and fast. The Professional/Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers reported in 2011 that 74 percent of surveyed journals offering some form of OA in 2009 offered hybrid OA. At the same time, SHERPA listed more than 90 publishers offering hybrid OA options, including all of the largest publishers. Despite its spread, hybrid OA journals do little or nothing to help researchers, libraries, or publishers. The average rate of uptake for the OA option at hybrid journals is just 2 percent. The chief virtue of hybrid OA journals is that they give publishers some firsthand experience with the economics and logistics of OA publishing. But the economics are artificial, since hybrid OA publishers have no incentive to increase author uptake and make the model succeed. The publishers always have subscriptions to fall back on. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of full-OA journals charge no publication fees and the overwhelming majority of hybrid-OA journals never gain firsthand experience with no-fee business models. A growing number of for-profit OA publishers are making profits, and a growing number of nonprofit OA publishers are breaking even or making surpluses. Two different business models drive these sustainable publishing programs. BioMed Central makes profits and the Public Library of Science makes surpluses by charging publication fees. MedKnow makes profits without charging publication fees by selling priced print editions of its OA journals. Fee-based OA journals tend to work best in fields where most research is funded, and no-fee journals tend to work best in fields and countries where comparatively little research is funded. The successes of these two business models give hope that gold OA can be sustainable in every discipline. Every kind of peer-reviewed journal can become more sustainable by reducing costs. Although peer review is generally performed by unpaid volunteers, organizing or facilitating peer review is an expense. The journal must select referees, distribute files to referees, monitor who has what, track progress, nag dawdlers, collect comments and share them with the right people, facilitate communication, distinguish versions, and collect data on acceptances and rejections. One powerful way to reduce costs without reducing quality is to use free and open-source journal management software to automate the clerical tasks on this list. The leader in this field is Open Journal Systems from the Public Knowledge Project, but there are more than a dozen other open-source packages. While OJS or other open-source software could benefit even toll-access journals, their use is concentrated among OA journals. OJS alone is has more than 9,000 installations (though not all are used for managing journals). This is not merely an example of how one openness movement can help another but also of how fearing openness can lead conventional publishers to forgo financial benefits and leave money on the table. There are reasons to think that OA journals cost less to produce than toll-access journals of the same quality. OA journals dispense with subscription management (soliciting, negotiating, tracking, renewing subscribers), dispense with digital rights management (authenticating users, distinguishing authorized from unauthorized, blocking access to unauthorized), eliminate legal fees for licensing (drafting, negotiating, monitoring, and enforcing restrictive licenses), and reduce or eliminate marketing. In their place they add back little more than the cost of collecting publication fees or institutional subsidies. Several studies and OA publishers have testified to these lower costs. We shouldn’t count the savings from dropping print, since most toll-access journals in the sciences have already dropped their print editions and those in the humanities are moving in the same direction. We should be suspicious when large, venerable, conventional publishers say that in their experience the economics of OA publishing don’t work. Print-era publishers retooling for digital, and toll-access publishers retooling for OA, will inevitably realize smaller savings from OA than lean, mean OA start-ups without legacy equipment, personnel, or overhead from the age of print and subscriptions. About one-quarter of all peer-reviewed journals today are OA. Like toll-access journals, some are in the black and thriving and some are in the red and struggling. However, the full range of OA journals begins to look like a success story when we consider that the vast majority of the money needed to support peer-reviewed journals is currently tied up in subscriptions to conventional journals. OA journals have reached their current numbers and quality despite the extraordinary squeeze on budgets devoted to the support of peer-reviewed journals. Even if OA journals had the same production costs as toll-access journals, there’s enough money in the system to pay for peer-reviewed OA journals in every niche where we currently have peer-reviewed toll-access journals, and at the same level of quality. In fact, there’s more than enough, since we wouldn’t have to pay publisher profit margins surpassing those at ExxonMobil. Jan Velterop, the former publisher of BioMed Central, once said that OA publishing can be profitable but will “bring profit margins more in line with the added value.” To support a full range of high-quality OA journals, we don’t need new money. We only need to redirect money we’re currently spending on peer-reviewed journals. There are many kinds of redirection. One is the voluntary conversion of toll-access journals to OA. Conversion could be a journal’s grudging response to declining library budgets for toll-access journals and exclusion from the big deals that take the lion’s share of library budgets. It could be a grudging response to its own past price increases and rising levels of green OA (see chapter 8 on casualties). Or it could be a hopeful and enthusiastic desire to achieve the benefits of OA for authors (greater audience and impact), readers (freedom from price and permission barriers), and publishers themselves (increased readership, citations, submissions, and quality). Another kind of redirection is the rise of OA journal funds at universities. Even during times of declining budgets, libraries are setting aside money to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals. The funds help faculty choose OA journals for their new work and help build a sustainable alternative to toll-access journals. Redirection is also taking place on a large scale, primarily through CERN’s SCOAP3 project (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics). SCOAP3 is an ambitious plan to convert all the major toll-access journals in particle physics to OA, redirect the money formerly spent on reader-side subscription fees to author-side publication fees, and reduce the overall price to the journal-supporting institutions. It’s a peaceful revolution based on negotiation, consent, and self-interest. After four years of patiently building up budget pledges from libraries around the world, SCOAP3 entered its implementation phase in in April 2011. If SCOAP3 succeeds, it won’t merely prove that CERN can pull off ambitious projects, which we already knew. It will prove that this particular ambitious project has an underlying win-win logic convincing to stakeholders. Some of the factors explaining the success of SCOAP3 to date are physics-specific, such as the small number of targeted journals, the green OA culture in physics embraced even by toll-access publishers, and the dominance of CERN. Other factors are not physics-specific, such as the evident benefits for research institutions, libraries, funders, and publishers. A success in particle physics would give hope that the model could be lifted and adapted to other fields without their own CERN-like institutions to pave the way. Other fields would not need CERN-like money or dominance so much as CERN-like convening power to bring the stakeholders to the table. Then the win-win logic would have a chance to take over from there. Mark Rowse, former CEO of Ingenta, sketched another strategy for large-scale redirection in December 2003. A publisher could “flip” its toll-access journals to OA at one stroke by reinterpreting the payments it receives from university libraries as publication fees for a group of authors rather than subscription fees for a group of readers. One advantage over SCOAP3 is that the Rowsean flip can be tried one journal or one publisher at a time, and doesn’t require discipline-wide coordination. It could also scale up to the largest publishers or the largest coalitions of publishers. We have to be imaginative but we don’t have to improvise. There are some principles we can try to follow. Money freed up by the cancellation or conversion of peer-reviewed TA journals should be spent first on peer-reviewed OA journals, to ensure the continuation of peer review. Large-scale redirection is more efficient than small-scale redirection. Peaceful revolution through negotiation and self-interest is more amicable and potentially more productive than adaptation forced by falling asteroids. For the record, I advocate redirecting money freed up by cancellations or conversions, not canceling journals in order to free up money (except with SCOAP3 or Rowse-like consent and negotiation). This may look like hair-splitting, but the difference is neither small nor subtle. It’s roughly the difference between having great expectations and planning to kill your parents.

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New work order In March 2015, it was time for Hayden Wood and Amit Gudka to move out of the kitchen. The pair had raised investment for their startup, Bulb, a renewable energy supplier, and they were looking for an office. A coworking space was the obvious choice: somewhere that would allow them to take on more desks as needed. (When I meet them a little over a year later, they were eight strong and hiring around one more each month.) "We looked at a few different spaces," says Wood, who had previously spent 10 years in management consultancy for Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte) and Bain & Company. "Second Home had been open a few months and we took the tour. We were nervous: were we going to get in?" It is odd, perhaps, to think of the renting of office space as a socially testing business, entailing pre-interview nerves. But acceptance into Second Home, for some, signifies hipness. Juliette Morgan, partner at Cushman & Wakefield, a property consultancy, who works out of Second Home, says: "I used to joke that there was a cool alarm that went off when people came to look round – but then they let us in." Morgan's case may have been helped by her previous role as head of property for Tech City, the government initiative promoted by David Cameron's advisor Rohan Silva, who also happens to be the co-founder of Second Home. Wood admits that he and Gudka, who previously traded energy at Barclays for eight years, did know some people at Second Home already. "When we looked on the website, some of the faces were familiar. And we hoped our business idea was quite good." When I arrive at the Second Home reception desk, a sign urges me to "join us tonight at 3.30pm for meditation." Before that, there's the option to have lunch at the atrium restaurant, Jago, founded by a former head chef of Ottolenghi and the former general manager of Morito. Today, there are cauliflower fritters made with lentil flour (gluten-free), which you can eat while admiring the exuberant architecture of Spanish firm SelgasCano, which has transformed the former carpet warehouse near Brick Lane: a plexiglass bubble punched out of the front of the building, sweeping curved walls, a wide cantilevered staircase up to the pod-like offices on the first floor. The benches are orange, the floors yellow. ("There is quite a lot of science behind the colours, to do with improving mood and productivity," says Morgan.) Flowers flop in elegant vases and masses of plants sit in pots on sills, desks and walls. A row of fruit trees is in blossom outside. The exposed concrete pillars look unfinished, with scribble and tags still visible. Sam Aldenton, Silva's co-founder, has sourced 600 mid-century modern chairs from all over Europe. "It's an aesthetic that tells an investor you're being frugal with their money," says Morgan, "but it's also playful and energetic and that works for your brand. For us, it tells the tech companies we want to work with that we understand them. Coworking spaces say something about you, that you're a Second Home business or a Central Working business." Being a Second Home business gives you access to others that have also made the grade. "We had a strong business plan, but there were other things we didn't have,"says Wood. "Someone at Second Home recommended our branding agency, Ragged Edge. Congregation Partners, who are here, have helped with recruiting; and we met Blue State Digital [a digital strategy agency that worked on Obama's election campaign, whose London office is based at Second Home] in the bar one Friday night and they offered us a workshop about how to market and launch. It's an extremely generous collaborative culture." Other kinds of business at Second Home include venture capitalists; the European headquarters of chore-outsourcing company TaskRabbit; and ASAP54, an app that scans online fashion and locates where to buy it. Silva and Aldenton curate events that help them to network and that offer a kind of intellectual support and ballast – so Amit Gudka, a fan of the South African theoretical physicist Neil Turok was able to hear him speak at Second Home and afterwards have dinner with him and Silva. Wood and Gudka's first post-kitchen office was in Second Home's roaming area, where freelancers come and go. A desk costs £350 a month; they are sold several times over (a four-to-one ratio is thought to ensure the right level of occupancy without straining supply). The pair subsequently moved into a studio, then a larger office; they will take a bigger space upstairs when the refurbishment of three upper floors is completed. "It doesn't feel like being a tenant," says Wood. "The community team here has taught us a lot about how to interact with our own members." We are all members now, it seems. Business ventures are turning themselves into clubs, making what used to be banal choices about office space or energy supply statements of identity. There was no shortage of office options for Wood and Gudka, and all of them carried connotations about what kind of business they meant to be: incubators and accelerators run by different sorts of organisations; hacker spaces; industry- and sector-coworking spaces; more traditional office rentals from companies like Regus and Workspace; and all manner of coworking spaces, from scruffy coops to coworking empires. Coworking began because startups and freelancers, typically in tech and the creative industries, needed somewhere to work. But as more organisations outsource more of their operations – or as large corporates seek to reach those startups – the range of activities represented among coworkers has expanded to comprehend almost everything. KPMG’s tech startup advice arm is based at Interchange in Camden. Merck, Microsoft, American Express and GE all lease desks at WeWork, in addition to running their own offices. The annual Global Coworking Survey, produced by Deskmag, anticipates that 10,000 new coworking spaces will open worldwide in 2016. In Europe, the estimated number of spaces (though it's hard to keep track) has risen from 3,400 in 2013 to around 7,800 in 2016. According to Cushman & Wakefield's Juliette Morgan, "Twelve per cent of the uptake in the London market in the last year has been spaces like this. Everyone thinks it's going to continue." At a purely economic level, it's easy to see why. As large corporates downsize their core operations, they no longer need vast offices. Iris Lapinski watched the process in action when her educational non-profit startup, Apps for Good, squatted in Royal Bank of Scotland’s offices in the City in late 2008. "RBS was going through huge waves of redundancies. On our floor, it was three of us and 150 empty desks," she says, "and then new people would come in and they'd get fired too. Eventually they'd fired so many people they closed down the building." Aware that "tech companies were doing something funkier", she moved Apps for Good into the Trampery, the first coworking space in Shoreditch. Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey founded WeWork in 2010 in New York to capitalise on this corporate downsizing phenomenon: leasing large spaces, often previous corporate offices, subdividing them, then selling them at a profit. WeWork typically rents its buildings (although it owns its latest London site in Paddington) then subleases the space – with, according to Fast Company, average gross margins of 60 per cent. The model has proved so successful that WeWork now has 103 locations in 29 cities worldwide. The company will open five new coworking spaces in London this year, bringing the total to 11, with Paddington large enough for 2,100 'members'. The company recently authorised the sale of up to $780m in new stock, giving it a $16bn valuation and making it, on paper, the sixth most valuable private startup in the world. The Freelancers' Union in the US claims that 30 per cent of the US working population is now freelance, and predicts a rise to 50 per cent by 2035. One in eight London workers are self-employed. But the unstoppable rise and rise of coworking isn't simply about corporate downsizing and the growth of the startup and the gig economy, significant though these are. What distinguishes contemporary coworking spaces is the nature of their cultural claims. A study by Harvard Business Review found that coworkers believe their work has more meaning. The authors suggested that working alongside people doing different things reinforces workers' identity and distinctiveness; that coworkers feel they have more control over their lives (many spaces are open 24/7); that they have a stronger sense of community; and that there is still a social mission inherent in the idea of coworking, as outlined in the Coworking manifesto, and reinforced by the annual Global Coworking UnConference or GCUC (pronounced 'juicy'). WeWork's website urges you to "Create your life's work". "Do what you love" is one of WeWork's slogans, emblazoned on the front of a notebook they give me when I visit. Another is "Thank God it's Monday". Neumann describes his generation (he is 36) as the 'we generation' which, he explains, "cares about the world, actually wants to do cool things, and loves working." The coworking space – even on a vast, industrial scale as at WeWork – is a club. And the whole point of clubs is that you want to belong to them. To someone raised in the era of the corporate office, used to the subversive feeling of being behind enemy lines, this may seem an odd way to think about the workplace. To anyone for whom The Office of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant was painfully recognisable, with its grey partitions and random people thrown together to do pretty pointless things and get on each other's nerves, it might seem risible. But clearly lots of people want this. A paradoxical effect of the internet has been to make us desire more social connection in the real world. From coffee shops to festivals to gyms, examples are everywhere of people keen to come together and share experiences. As we have to rely more on ourselves and on our own resources at work, it's probably not surprising that we seek out the reassuring sight of other people doing the same. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri say in their 2012 book, Declaration, "The centre of gravity of capitalist production no longer resides in the factory but has drifted outside its walls. Society has become a factory." Work has blurred into life, in part owing to the peculiar nature of our current relationship to technology. We do not conceive of machines, as we did in the past, as engines of oppression, exploiting workers; rather, we frame our devices as intimate and personal, interactive and fun, blurring the distinctions between work and play. We tend not, for example, to view posting on Facebook as labour, even though there are perfectly good economic arguments why we should. The eight hours' work, eight hours' leisure, eight hours' rest fought for so fiercely in the 19th century has become meaningless in an era when we willingly, eagerly, spend 12 hours a day on a laptop. As work becomes increasingly unpredictable and permeable, in a way that reflects the internet itself, workspaces are imagined more as social landscapes. Increasingly, they are designed for serendipitous encounters, emotional expression, explorations of identity. Of course, you could take the cynical view that the imperative of productivity has now colonised every aspect of our lives, that our private relationships have become 'social capital', that even our intimate interactions have been turned into a kind of labour. Or you could say, as coworking enthusiasts tend to, that work has got a whole lot more fun. Whatever, this shift in our sense of work helps to explain why workplaces have increasingly come to resemble clubs, and why no one is falling about laughing at the idea of Silva and Aldenton calling their workspace Second Home. The workspace has become an expression of identity – which raises two questions: first, if coworking is all about finding a space to express your individualism, follow your passions, explore your creativity, why do the spaces all look so alike? And second, if the workplace is all about belonging to a club and clubs are by their nature exclusive, how scalable is that? There are new buildings rising all around WeWork Moorgate, in the City of London; an insistent noise of drilling, a clang of girders, a rumble of concrete mixers. This is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Crossrail's engineers are tunnelling beneath; giant new buildings advertise themselves on construction hoardings everywhere at street level: there is a provisional air, as though the city can't quite catch up with its own wealth. WeWork Moorgate is the second largest coworking space in the UK after WeWork Paddington, accommodating 3,000 people over eight floors. A permanent desk will cost you £425 a month, rising to £675 depending on its location in the building. A one-person office will set you back £725 to £825 a month, a four-person £2,600 to £3,100. The largest office here is for 40 people; in Paddington, one company has 230 desks. The interior ticks all the coworking style boxes: raw concrete; exposed ceilings revealing air conditioning ducts, pipes and silvered insulation; multicoloured upholstery; a kitchen with its own island bar offering free tea, coffee and craft beer; easy chairs and sofas; tables of varying heights and sizes; music; and some signifiers of fun, such as a table tennis table (but, unlike at WeWork's South Bank site, no arcade machines; nor, unlike at its Devonshire Square, any skateboards on the walls). In the toilet, cups for mouthwash urge you to 'stay fresh', which I am sure is meant jocularly but which arouses in me the same sort of mulish resentment I used to feel when I worked in advertising in my twenties and slogans in reception ordered me to "reach for the stars". (What makes you think I wouldn't, mate?). Given that coworking, which after all grew out of hacker culture, is supposed to embody an attitude of resistance to conventional authority, WeWork is curiously corporate, certainly in its approach to communication. I am asked not to quote the community manager who shows me around. There isn't anyone who can speak on the record (or off it, for that matter) in the building. My queries have to be submitted in writing then edited down because there are too many of them. The answers come back, finally, appended: "All attributable to Eugen Miropolski, Managing Director, Europe". Eugen Miropolski, Managing Director, Europe, says that WeWork is "much more than an office space provider. Members are given the space, community and services they need to create their life's work". Going around the building, what you mainly notice is that the spaces allotted to people's life's work are rather tiny and cramped. Effectively off corridors, they seem rather conventional behind their glass partitions: a desk, a chair, a lamp, a drawer. Many coworkers sit with their backs to their colleagues, staring at blank walls, with barely enough space for a third person to pass between them. You need a keycard to get anywhere inside the building. WeWork's enthusiasts, though, emphasise the connections they make with others, either physically or through an app that links members to 50,000 others worldwide. Miropolski claims "more than 70 per cent of our members collaborate with each other". This empire of office space has been derided as 'McCoworking'; but another way of looking at it might simply be that it's a sign of natural segmentation as the market matures. Many workspace providers set up because they wanted some office space themselves; they have no desire to be other than local, small-scale and collaborative. But others are starting to take on a role as akind of corporate parent. Canada's Coworking Ontario provides health insurance. WeWork is also reported to be looking at providing discounts on healthcare, payroll and shipping, replicating services that a corporate employer might once have provided. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, coffee shop-workspace hybrid Timberyard is dematerialising the desk, providing mobile workers who need to sit down and check their emails with the most ad hoc of workspaces. Most of Timberyard's users don't pay for space, the usual coworking business model, but they do pay for the tea and coffee ("award-winning", co-founder Darren Elliott is keen to point out) and for the artisan-produced, wellness-focused food (super seeds with almond butter on toast, beetroot, avocado and hummus on toast, hibiscus cake). Unlike most coffee shops, Timberyard's branches in Seven Dials and Soho are designed to encourage customers to stay and work: there is fast Wi-Fi with plentiful power sockets, careful regulation of temperature, lots of natural light and attentive design. Many of the chairs have been rescued from skips and reupholstered; the tables are striped like Jim Lambie staircases; the disabled toilet looks like a shipping container. In the last couple of months, Timberyard has renting out permanent desks in the basement of its Soho branch and now hosts three companies, one of eight people, one of 12 and one of 20. But Elliott says the shop upstairs will always be open to the street and the public. Typically, workers stay for a couple of hours, but they might be there for 20 minutes or all day. "We believe this is the way people will work in the future," Elliott says, surveying a sea of laptops: "portable, connected, independent and collaborative, sharing resources and seeking out inspiring spaces." Timberyard intends to become a way station for the digital nomad. The logical extension of the elision of work and home life is that the same organisations might end up providing both. WeWork is experimenting with micro apartments in two locations: in New York and at Crystal City, outside Washington DC. Second Home is also believed to have Roam, which began in Bali, intends to build a global co-living network, with its offer: "Sign one lease. Live around the world." From its initial base in Ubud, it has expanded into Miami and recently Madrid; Buenos Aires and London are 'coming soon'. Roam isn't simply about a bed for the night: it sells itself partly on the quality of its coworking offer. In Bali, the office space is on the roof, under a palm thatch, with a swimming pool in the courtyard below. Coworking organisations increasingly see a market in digital nomads: if you can work from a coffee shop in Seven Dials, why not a rooftop in Bali? It's not even necessary to have a string of spaces across the world to attract drop-ins from elsewhere:Coworking Visa andCoPass offer 'passports' that guarantee a certain amount of time in any of their participating spaces. The Trampery, the pioneering coworking organisation in London that attracted Iris Lapinski, is now moving into co-living. Founded by the sociologist-entrepreneur-musician-traveller-dandy Charles Armstrong, The Trampery currently has three spaces, at Old Street, near City Hall, and in Hackney Wick. Armstrong began with a cross-sector workspace but now specialises in fashion and retail at Old St, travel and tourism at London Bridge, and digital artists, fashion and design in Hackney, finding this a better way to create 'intentional communities' and secure corporate partnerships. In what Armstrong calls "a somewhat unconventional deal with Peabody", the Trampery is about to start building Fish Island Village in Hackney Wick: a co-living space that will also include traditional social housing. This experiment is partly a response to the pricing out of London of artists and other creatives and partly an attempt "to move beyond a single workspace to think about a neighbourhood". When Fish Island Village is built, the Trampery will curate its inhabitants based on what Armstrong describes as a mix of "means testing and merit testing". Rather than the usual micro-apartment model, "cellular units with a cavernous social area", Fish Island Village will have communal spaces for up to six bedrooms, "more like a large family. There will still be a members' club, shared by everyone." The development won't be aimed solely at affluent 18- to 30-year-olds, but will include flats of up to four bedrooms, suitable for people with children. "We don't want to create a single-generational demographic bubble." The single generation demographic bubble is of course the trouble with all this curation. Even while lip service is paid to ideas of innovation coming from unexpected places, from unlikely collisions and random connections, it is a very tough-minded curator who doesn't seek to be surrounded by people who are basically a bit like himself. With coworking spaces, as with the internet, there is the promise of connection and collaboration and a world of newness and surprise. And, as with the internet, there is a danger that you can easily end up talking either to people just like yourself. So what of those questions about style and scalability? As far as the former is concerned, coworking spaces do all look a little bit alike – but design has a long history of innovators and followers. Inevitably, everyone borrows the more directional visual cues, even to the point of pastiche. But they are not, in fact, all alike. They are surprising in their degree of difference. There are industrial-scale operators that lack the warmth and personal touches of the smaller providers (no one at WeWork is ever going to come out of the kitchen as you arrive, knowing your name and whom you're here to visit, which is what happens at the Trampery); but which also lack their preciousness about who is allowed to the party. And then there are the cool clubs that everyone in their right mind would want to join, but where few are chosen. It seems likely that coworking spaces will follow a pattern set by festivals. They will proliferate, each developing its own distinctive vibe, projecting an array of differing identities while all answering a need for the increasingly autonomous workers of the future to hang out with other people. Meanwhile, the current excitement over coworking may have less to do with a method of office organisation than with a handful of hugely successful connectors. When Iris Lapinski moved out of RBS, she chose the Trampery partly because "Charles draws in interesting people. He's got links to corporates, government, policymakers." One of these connections turned out to be Bob Schukai, head of advanced product innovation at Thomson Reuters, which led directly to £300,000 of sponsorship revenue for Apps for Good. "Charles is a great connector," Lapinsky says, "and that is really what makes the Trampery so special. Most don't have the same flair." Images from top: WeWork Moorgate; Second Home; WeWork; The Trampery Old Street, Home of Publicis Drugstore; Timberyard; WeWork This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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The end of the web In the past year, as we have witnessed the upending of the political order, the internet has been the theatre where many of the battles have been fought: from the hacking and leaking of Democratic party emails, to the proliferation of fake news and alternative facts, and yes, the outpourings of @realDonaldTrump. With domestic and geopolitical tensions rising, governments are finding it increasingly hard to function amid a constant barrage of uncontrollable information and potential cyber-attacks, making them grow more wary both of the internet's influence and their ability to control it. The fallout from this means we are facing the prospect of countries around the world pulling the plug on the open, global internet and creating their own independent networks. We might be about to see the end of the world wide internet as we know it. With globalisation under attack, the ultimate bastion of borderlessness – the global internet – might very well be one the biggest scalps taken by the newly emerging world order heralded in by Brexit and Trump. If a global orthodoxy of free trade, soft power and international organisations is overpowered by belligerent nations and isolationism, the net will inevitably be swept away with it. Yet although fragmentation – and ultimately also Balkanisation – will carry great social and economic cost, it could also be an opportunity. Europe, which has already been flexing its muscles when it comes to internet policy, now finds itself forced to rely less on US cooperation. It should therefore become a frontrunner in developing an alternative, decentralised internet, with its root values of fairness, openness and democracy restored. This could help the net – and indeed Europe – to become more resilient again. As much as we fear the 'splinternet', we should welcome the Euronet. Weaponisation of the internet Since we've become dependent on the internet for almost everything we do, dangers to the network's integrity threaten devastating effects. Governments may be tempted to turn inwards in an attempt to shield themselves and their citizens from cyber-attacks. Last October, unknown hackers used an array of badly secured 'internet of things' (IoT) devices to bring down most of the internet on the east coast of America in one of the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks to date. While depriving Americans of Amazon and Facebook for several hours was surely an inconvenience, the potential of the weaponised internet to do harm is infinitely greater. As more of the components of a country's critical infrastructure move online, the number of possible targets grows too. Hackers shut down a significant part of Ukraine's electricity grid in 2015, and crippled several important Estonian industries, including its banks, in 2007. Many cyber-security experts warn about the lacklustre defence of everything from air traffic control towers and voting machines to nuclear plants. One well-placed attack could do more damage than the most aggressive of traditional military campaigns, at a fraction of the cost. Because of the high degree of uncertainty surrounding cyber-capabilities – 'know your enemy' is a hard adage to follow if potential culprits and their capabilities are so tough to track – it has become impossible for governments to completely shield their countries from cyber-attacks. The growing urge to control the internet has also become apparent over the influence of so-called fake news. Distorting public opinion and fact as a manipulation technique is nothing new: it's been used since Roman times. But the relentless pace and scope with which the internet allows information to disseminate is quite unprecedented. Governments and the media (who have themselves often swapped truth for clicks) are having an increasingly hard time stemming the flow of biased or misleading news stories. So the democratic process suffers. The solutions offered by the reluctant tech giants providing a platform for fake news won't be sufficient to stop it altogether. This will prompt more countries to follow Russia and China in building their own platforms like VKontakte and Baidu, thus reducing foreign influence and allowing for extensive censorship and monitoring. The desire of developing countries to establish their own social networks will see them retreat into their own national bubbles. Fragile infrastructure While cyber attacks and false information campaigns use the internet to attack the infrastructure by which our societies function, the internet's own infrastructure is also at risk. Despite the internet's ephemeral, lawless appeal, its underlying network of cables, tubes and wires is very much rooted in the physical world. Over 99 per cent of all global internet communications are facilitated by an impressive web of undersea cables, connecting all corners of the world. A submarine deliberately destroying one of these cables in a hard-to-reach place could bring down access to parts of the internet for weeks; and so, by extension, all the systems that rely upon it. The fallibility of this shared infrastructure also makes it impossible to keep foreign or hostile actors out of domestic affairs. Though governments that heavily restrict internet access might find it easier to prevent information from flowing in and out of the country, they are still reliant on the same co-owned systems, with some parts inevitably falling under other countries' jurisdictions. This became very clear after the 2013 Snowden revelations, which showed that the US routinely tapped into foreign internet traffic routed through the country. The massive scale of this monitoring even led then president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff to call for the construction of an undersea cable from Brazil directly to Europe, bypassing the prying eyes of the National Security Agency altogether. And US intelligence agencies are by no means the only ones doing this kind of snooping, as we know all too well. With various nations eyeing each other suspiciously and traditional alliances crumbling, building alternative structures to make foreign interference more difficult seems a logical consequence. Who rules the internet? It won't just be the actual infrastructure and 'hard' elements of the internet where governments will seek more independence. Internet governance, the catch-all term to describe the processes and decisions that determine how the internet is managed, and how its technical norms and standards are set, is increasingly complex. In principle, no single actor should be in charge of the internet governance processes. Ideally, these should be overseen by a multi-stakeholder model where governments, the private sector and advocacy groups would have an equal voice and where anyone could be allowed to become involved. In practice, however, it is US government institutions and companies – yes, the usual suspects – that set the rules. They tend to be over-represented in meetings, and in charge of some of the largest regulatory bodies. American stewardship over the internet has long been an area of contention. Countries like China, Russia, and many (mainly developing) countries want more control over their own domestic networks, preferring to see the current model replaced by something more Westphalian, perhaps resembling the United Nations. This discussion will likely flair up again soon as the Trump administration seeks ways to reverse the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition: an arcane but highly controversial policy issue. IANA is the agency in charge of maintaining the global DNS (Domain Name System) as well as managing Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation and other important basic structural functions of the internet. The internet’s IANA functions had traditionally been managed by the non-profit ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), but remained under contract of the US Department of Commerce, which oversaw its processes – effectively leaving it under US government control. After almost 20 years of bickering and international kowtowing, IANA was brought under full ICANN control last October, finally becoming fully independent. This to the great dismay of many Republican lawmakers; particularly senator Ted Cruz, who has been fighting to stop the process for years. If the US government does decide to overturn the transition (and Trump has certainly shown enthusiasm for overturning decisions of the previous administration), it will do a lot of damage to the American-led governance process. How much credibility can it have when the most important partner doesn't even play by the rules? As these tensions increase, we'll likely see a push for more government bodies to take control of internet governance (such as the short-lived, Brazil-led NETMundial initiative), abandoning the more inclusive and cooperative approach involving businesses and civil society organisations. Then if the process fell even further apart, it would be a substantial challenge to the interoperable global internet, as regulations and standards swiftly went in different directions. The Big Four Though the internet was initially heralded as the greatest democratiser of information since Gutenberg, most data now flows through only a handful of companies. Silicon Valley tech giants, with the 'Big Four' of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon at the helm, rake in most of the spoils of the all-conquering global online economy. In their ambition to expand even further, these tech companies are themselves also an important cause of internet fragmentation, erecting 'walled gardens' all over the world. Facebook's controversial Free Basics service, which offers free data plans to users in developing countries, but which restricts access to a small number of Facebook-approved websites, is a prime example. Some call it digital colonialism. These moves aimed at generating even more revenue, concentrated in the hands of the few as inequality rises, understandably cause concern among governments and citizens alike. But our main worry should not be about economics. The Big Four – controlling our data, as well as our access to information – wield an inordinate amount of power. Indeed, Denmark recently announced it would appoint a igital ambassador specifically to deal with these technology giants, citing their influence as larger than that of many countries. Citizens worldwide have become so dependent on these platforms that there are effectively no readily available alternatives to move to if things turn sour. The sheer scale of the Women's March and similar demonstrations in recent weeks would not have been possible without the ability to organise online. What if these channels fall away, their freedom restricted by companies under the yoke of a hostile government? Though many American technology companies have already pledged they will not assist with the creation of a 'Muslim registry' – and have pushed back on Trump’s latest immigration restrictions – we have to be very aware that the amount of personal data they have on each of us would make it far too easy for them to do so. Foreign governments, which in the current political climate cannot rely on Google abiding by its mantra, 'Don't be evil', will aggressively start to pursue the construction of domestic alternatives. It is something we are already seeing happening worldwide. The splinternet Though the dream of the web internet pioneers was one of a completely open, non-hierarchical internet, over the years barriers have been springing up that restrict this freedom. Bit by bit, the internet is becoming more cordoned off. The idea of splitting up the internet into different, Balkanised internets – with a completely separate infrastructure – is not new. After the Snowden revelations, Germany took action and started looking into the construction of the 'Internetz', a German-only network (although one that allows for the possibility of expanding to the rest of the EU). We do not currently have an example of a real internet island in place, but the closest version we see is probably the Great Firewall of China. Though China hasn't built an entirely separate infrastructure, its internet looks entirely different from what we are used to, with content heavily censored and many platforms and websites completely banned. Russia appears to be following suit. Last November, Russia banned LinkedIn from operating in the country because the social network did not adhere to a new law decreeing that all data generated by Russian users should be stored within Russia itself. In recent weeks, news has also emerged that Moscow has been working with Beijing to implement something similar to the Great Firewall for its own domestic users. Democracies and autocracies alike have long come to understand the great power of the internet and have learned how to both harness and restrict it. Who will be the first to go it alone? It's difficult to say yet but the usual suspects are lining up: China; Russia; Europe; even Trump's America . Other countries like Brazil or Turkey might see a compelling reason to do so as well. Now that we are so used to a ubiquitous and global internet, it's hard to imagine what a world of fragmented, national internets might look like. What we do know is that the internet of fun and games, of unfettered access, is quickly coming to an end. When it does, it will be another big nail in the coffin for globalisation. Breaking free The idea of a Balkanised internet, of different national and supranational internet islands, is a dark one. What living in such a future would look like, no one knows. Inevitably, though, it would herald a world of less mutual understanding, less shared prosperity and shrinking horizons. However, the fragmentation of the internet need not be bad news. As the limitations of its original incarnation are becoming increasingly clear, starting from scratch provides us with an important opportunity to right our initial wrongs. We can build a network or networks that are more ethical, inclusive and resilient to outside threats. While this is a moment of disharmony and uncertainty for the European project, the EU has much it agrees upon when it comes to policy and regulating the internet's mostly American corporate giants: from its ambitious data protection policies and the right to be forgotten, to Apple tax case. But it could do more. The global internet as we know it today began as a public space where everyone had an equal opportunity to use it as we liked. But it has quickly privatised, locking us into platforms that 'harvest' our data. As European citizens grow increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the internet, the EU has a great opportunity. The EU should take a different approach to the internet and, rather than making it an unregulated free-for-all, consider it a 'commons': a public good open to all, excluding none. The EU could create and fund the infrastructure for this and help ensure safety for all. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals would do their bit by creating a variety of tools to add to this commons, which would become fully interoperable through shared standards and underpinning technologies. One necessary component of such an internet commons is that it should be decentralised. Decentralising the internet and rethinking its structure would allow users to take back control over the network of networks, letting them manage their own personal data rather than giving it away to large companies, as well as offering them more choice over the tools they use. It is also often said that distributed internets would also inherently be much safer: largescale cyber-attacks are easier to prevent if we reduce the number of central nodes that traffic can travel through. But a European internet would above all need to be radically ambitious – especially with the EU in a fractured state. The rules for the decentralised, new internet are still wide open, and we have the opportunity to set them. The emergence of a new world order is forcing Europe to rethink itself, come closer together and defend its values in the world. Creating a completely new internet built around these values – and open to any like-minded country to join – might be one extraordinarily effective way of achieving it. This is an extended version of a piece originally published in Nesta's 10 predictions for 2017 series Correction 20 February 2017: this article was updated to correct a few instances of 'web' to 'internet' This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.

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SIGNAL RED By HENRY GUTH They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out. "Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said. Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad. He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes. The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down. There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die. As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs. The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed: " Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. " Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long. " Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. " The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed. Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk. He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously. A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there. Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked. " Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light. He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket. "Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back." Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind. The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man." The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— " With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off. Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them. "We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in. Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones. "Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are." Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does." The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff. "Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough." Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?" "Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door. Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm. "A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know." Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck. In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other. What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited. The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship. " All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. " Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out. Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked. The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside. Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously. Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship. He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped. He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return. A bell clanged. Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM. Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately. Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears. The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy. The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. " The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us." The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet. Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die. This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence. Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order. "Port guns alert." Then hush and tension. The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all. "Fire number seven." He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band. This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see. He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough. The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead. "Hold fire." He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said. "Stand by." Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands. This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down.... "It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty." Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust . Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered. He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man. He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously. A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face. "Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?" Shano blinked. Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?" Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said. "Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face. He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints. Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked. He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing. A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—" Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now? "Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!" Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background. "Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours." Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth. "Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!" Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe. The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!" Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship. The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand." "Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?" "No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel." The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die. Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out. Shano smoked and thought. They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed. He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship. Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head. "One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum." He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway. What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again. Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive. A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?" Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years. "Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...." Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that.... "Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?" He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man. Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.

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CAPTAIN MIDAS By ALFRED COPPEL, JR. The captain of the Martian Maid stared avidly at the torn derelict floating against the velvet void. Here was treasure beyond his wildest dreams! How could he know his dreams should have been nightmares? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Gold! A magic word, even today, isn't it? Lust and gold ... they go hand in hand. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. And, of course, there's another word needed to make up the trilogy. You don't get any thing for nothing. So add this: Cost. Or you might call it pain, sorrow, agony. Call it what you like. It's what you pay for great treasure.... These things were true when fabled Jason sailed the Argo beyond Colchis seeking the Fleece. They were true when men sailed the southern oceans in wooden ships. And the conquest of space hasn't changed us a bit. We're still a greedy lot.... I'm a queer one to be saying these things, but then, who has more right? Look at me. My hair is gray and my face ... my face is a mask. The flesh hangs on my bones like a yellow cloth on a rickety frame. I am old, old. And I wait here on my hospital cot—wait for the weight of years I never lived to drag me under and let me forget the awful things my eyes have seen. I'm poor, too, or else I wouldn't be here in this place of dying for old spacemen. I haven't a dime except for the pittance the Holcomb Foundation calls a spaceman's pension. Yet I had millions in my hands. Treasure beyond your wildest dreams! Cursed treasure.... You smile. You are thinking that I'm just an old man, beached earthside, spinning tall tales to impress the youngsters. Maybe, thinking about the kind of spacemen my generation produced, you have the idea that if ever we'd so much as laid a hand on anything of value out in space we'd not let go until Hell froze over! Well, you're right about that. We didn't seek the spaceways for the advancement of civilization or any of that Foundation bushwah, you can be certain of that. We did it for us ... for Number One. That's the kind of men we were, and we were proud of it. We hung onto what we found because the risks were high and we were entitled to keep what we could out there. But there are strange things in the sky. Things that don't respond to all of our neat little Laws and Theories. There are things that are no part of the world of men, thick with danger—and horror. If you doubt that—and I can see you do—just look at me. I suppose you've never heard of the Martian Maid, and so you don't know the story of what happened to her crew or her skipper. I can give you this much of an answer. I was her skipper. And her crew? They ride high in the sky ... dust by this time. And all because they were men, and men are greedy and hasty and full of an unreasoning, unthinking love for gold. They ride a golden ship that they paid for with all the years of their lives. It's all theirs now. Bought and paid for. It wasn't too long ago that I lifted the Maid off Solis Lacus on that last flight. Not many of you will remember her class of ship, so many advances have been made in the last few years. The Maid was two hundred feet from tip to tail, and as sleek a spacer as ever came out of the Foundation Yards. Chemical fueled, she was nothing at all like the spherical hyperdrives we see today. She was armed, too. The Foundation still thought of space as a possible stamping ground for alien creatures though no evidence of any extra-terrestrial life had ever been found ... then. My crew was a rough bunch, like all those early crews. I remember them so well. Lean, hungry men with hell in their eyes and a great lust for high pay and hard living. Spinelli, Shelley, Cohn, Marvin, Zaleski. There wasn't a man on board who wouldn't have traded his immortal soul for a few solar dollars, and I don't claim that I was any different. That's the kind of men that opened up the spaceways, too. Don't believe all this talk about the noble pioneering spirit of man. That's tripe. There never has been such a thing as a noble pioneer. Not in space or anywhere else. It is the malcontent and the adventuring mercenary that pushes the frontier outward. I didn't know, that night as I stood in the valve of the Maid, watching the loading cranes pull away, that I was starting out on my last flight. I don't think any of the others could have guessed, either. It was the sort of night that you only see on Mars. The sort of night that makes a spaceman wonder why in hell he wants to leave the relative security of the Earth-Mars-Venus Triangle to go jetting across the belt into deep space and the drab desolation of the outer System. I stood there, watching the lights of Canalopolis in the distance. For just a moment I was ... well, touched. It looked beautiful and unreal under the racing moons. The lights of the gin mills and houses made a sparkling filigree pattern on the dark waters of the ancient canal, and the moons cast their shifting shadows across the silted banks. I was too far away to see the space-fevered bums and smell the shanties, and for a little while I felt the wonder of standing on the soil of a world that man had made his own with his rapacity and his sheer guts and gimme. I thought of our half empty cargo hold and the sweet payload we would pick up on Callisto. And I counted the extra cash my packets of snow would bring from those lonely men up there on the barren moonlets of the outer Systems. There were plenty of cargoes carried on the Maid that the Holcomb Foundation snoopers never heard about, you can be sure of that. In those days the asteroid belt was the primary danger and menace to astrogation. For a long while it held men back from deep space, but as fuels improved a few ships were sent out over the top. A few million miles up out of the ecliptic plane brings you to a region of space that's pretty thinly strewn with asteroids, and that's the way we used to make the flight between the outer systems and the EMV Triangle. It took a long while for hyperdrives to be developed and of course atomics never panned out because of the weight problem. So that's the orbit the Maid took on that last trip of mine. High and clear into the supra-solar void. And out there in that primeval blackness is where we found the derelict. I didn't realize it was a derelict when Spinelli first reported it from the forward scope position. I assumed it was a Foundation ship. The Holcomb Foundation was founded for the purpose of developing spaceflight, and as the years went by it took on the whole responsibility for the building and dispatching of space ships. Never in history had there been any real evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, and when the EMV Triangle proved barren, we all just assumed that the Universe was man's own particular oyster. That kind of unreasoning arrogance is as hard to explain as it is to correct. There were plenty of ships being lost in space, and immediately that Spinelli's report from up forward got noised about the Maid every one of us started mentally counting up his share of the salvage money. All this before we were within ten thousand miles of the hulk! All spaceships look pretty much alike, but as I sat at the telescope I saw that there was something different about this one. At such a distance I couldn't get too much detail in our small three inch glass, but I could see that the hulk was big—bigger than any ship I'd ever seen before. I had the radar fixed on her and then I retired with my slide rule to Control. It wasn't long before I discovered that the derelict ship was on a near collision course, but there was something about its orbit that was strange. I called Cohn, the Metering Officer, and showed him my figures. "Mister Cohn," I said, chart in hand, "do these figures look right to you?" Cohn's dark eyes lit up as they always did when he worked with figures. It didn't take him long to check me. "The math is quite correct, Captain," he said. I could see that he hadn't missed the inference of those figures on the chart. "Assemble the ship's company, Mister Cohn," I ordered. The assembly horn sounded throughout the Maid and I could feel the tug of the automatics taking over as the crew left their stations. Soon they were assembled in Control. "You have all heard about Mister Spinelli's find," I said, "I have computed the orbit and inspected the object through the glass. It seems to be a spacer ... either abandoned or in distress...." Reaching into the book rack above my desk I took down a copy of the Foundation's Space Regulations and opened it to the section concerning salvage. "Sections XVIII, Paragraph 8 of the Code Regulating Interplanetary Astrogation and Commerce," I read, "Any vessel or part of vessel found in an abandoned or totally disabled condition in any region of space not subject to the sovereignty of any planet of the Earth-Venus-Mars Triangle shall be considered to be the property of the crew of the vessel locating said abandoned or disabled vessel except in such cases as the ownership of said abandoned or disabled vessel may be readily ascertained...." I looked up and closed the book. "Simply stated, that means that if that thing ahead of us is a derelict we are entitled to claim it as salvage." "Unless it already belongs to someone?" asked Spinelli. "That's correct Mister Spinelli, but I don't think there is much danger of that," I replied quietly. "My figures show that hulk out there came in from the direction of Coma Berenices...." There was a long silence before Zaleski shifted his two hundred pounds uneasily and gave a form to the muted fear inside me. "You think ... you think it came from the stars , Captain?" "Maybe even from beyond the stars," Cohn said in a low voice. Looking at that circle of faces I saw the beginnings of greed. The first impact of the Metering Officer's words wore off quickly and soon every man of my crew was thinking that anything from the stars would be worth money ... lots of money. Spinelli said, "Do we look her over, Captain?" They all looked at me, waiting for my answer. I knew it would be worth plenty, and money hunger was like a fever inside me. "Certainly we look it over, Mister Spinelli," I said sharply. "Certainly!" The first thing about the derelict that struck us as we drew near was her size. No ship ever built in the Foundation Yards had ever attained such gargantuan proportions. She must have stretched a full thousand feet from bow to stern, a sleek torpedo shape of somehow unspeakable alienness. Against the backdrop of the Milky Way, she gleamed fitfully in the light of the faraway sun, the metal of her flanks grained with something like tiny, glittering whorls. It was as though the stuff were somehow unstable ... seeking balance ... maybe even alive in some strange and alien way. It was readily apparent to all of us that she had never been built for inter-planetary flight. She was a starship. Origin unknown. An aura of mystery surrounded her like a shroud, protecting the world that gave her birth mutely but effectively. The distance she must have come was unthinkable. And the time it had taken...? Aeons. Millennia. For she was drifting, dead in space, slowly spinning end over end as she swung about Sol in a hyperbolic orbit that would soon take her out and away again into the inter-stellar deeps. Something had wounded her ... perhaps ten million years ago ... perhaps yesterday. She was gashed deeply from stem to stern with a jagged rip that bared her mangled innards. A wandering asteroid? A meteor? We would never know. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling of things beyond the ken of men as I looked at her through the port. I would never know what killed her, or where she was going, or whence she came. Yet she was mine. It made me feel like an upstart. And it made me afraid ... but of what? We should have reported her to the nearest EMV base, but that would have meant that we'd lose her. Scientists would be sent out. Men better equipped than we to investigate the first extrasolar artifact found by men. But I didn't report her. She was ours. She was money in the bank. Let the scientists take over after we'd put a prize crew aboard and brought her into Callisto for salvage.... That's the way I had things figured. The Maid hove to about a hundred yards from her and hung there, dwarfed by the mighty glistening ship. I called for volunteers and we prepared a boarding party. I was thinking that her drives alone would be worth millions. Cohn took charge and he and three of the men suited up and crossed to her. In an hour they were back, disappointment largely written on their faces. "There's nothing left of her, Captain," Cohn reported, "Whatever hit her tore up the innards so badly we couldn't even find the drives. She's a mess inside. Nothing left but the hull and a few storage compartments that are still unbroken." She was never built to carry humanoids he told us, and there was nothing that could give us a hint of where she had come from. The hull alone was left. He dropped two chunks of metal on my desk. "I brought back some samples of her pressure hull," he said, "The whole thing is made of this stuff...." "We'll still take her in," I said, hiding my disappointment. "The carcass will be worth money in Callisto. Have Mister Marvin and Zaleski assemble a spare pulse-jet. We'll jury-rig her and bring her down under her own power. You take charge of provisioning her. Check those compartments you found and install oxy-generators aboard. When it's done report to me in my quarters." I picked up the two samples of gleaming metal and called for a metallurgical testing kit. "I'm going to try and find out if this stuff is worth anything...." The metal was heavy—too heavy, it seemed to me, for spaceship construction. But then, who was to say what conditions existed on that distant world where this metal was made? Under the bright fluorescent over my work-table, the chunks of metal torn from a random bulkhead of the starship gleamed like pale silver; those strange little whorls that I had noticed on the outer hull were there too, like tiny magnetic lines of force, making the surface of the metal seem to dance. I held the stuff in my bare hand. It had a yellowish tinge, and it was heavier .... Even as I watched, the metal grew yellower, and the hand that held it grew bone weary, little tongues of fatigue licking up my forearm. Suddenly terrified, I dropped the chunk as though it were white hot. It struck the table with a dull thud and lay there, a rich yellow lump of metallic lustre. For a long while I just sat and stared. Then I began testing, trying all the while to quiet the trembling of my hands. I weighed it on a balance. I tested it with acids. It had changed unquestionably. It was no longer the same as when I had carried it into my quarters. The whorls of force were gone. It was no longer alive with a questing vibrancy ... it was inert, stable. From somewhere, somehow, it had drawn the energy necessary for transmutation. The unknown metal—the stuff of which that whole mammoth spaceship from the stars was built—was now.... Gold! I scarcely dared believe it, but there it was staring at me from my table-top. Gold! I searched my mind for an explanation. Contra-terrene matter, perhaps, from some distant island universe where matter reacted differently ... drawing energy from somewhere, the energy it needed to find stability in its new environment. Stability as a terrene element—wonderfully, miraculously gold! And outside, in the void beyond the Maid's ports there were tons of this metal that could be turned into treasure. My laughter must have been a wild sound in those moments of discovery.... A slight sound behind me made me spin around in my chair. Framed in the doorway was the heavy figure of my Third Officer, Spinelli. His black eyes were fastened hungrily on the lump of yellow metal on the table. He needed no explanation to tell him what it was, and it seemed to me that his very soul reached out for the stuff, so sharp and clear was the meaning of the expression on his heavy face. "Mister Spinelli!" I snapped, "In the future knock before entering my quarters!" Reluctantly his eyes left the lump of gold and met mine. "From the derelict, Captain?" There was an imperceptible pause between the last two words. I ignored his question and made a mental note to keep a close hand on the rein with him. Spinelli was big and dangerous. "Speak your piece, Mister," I ordered sharply. "Mister Cohn reports the derelict ready to take aboard the prize crew ... sir," he said slowly. "I'd like to volunteer for that detail." I might have let him go under ordinary circumstances, for he was a first class spaceman and the handling of a jury-rigged hulk would need good men. But the gold-hunger I had seen in his eyes warned me to beware. I shook my head. "You will stay on board the Maid with me, Spinelli. Cohn and Zaleski will handle the starship." Stark suspicion leaped into his eyes. I could see the wheels turning slowly in his mind. Somehow, he was thinking, I was planning to cheat him of his rightful share of the derelict treasure ship. "We will say nothing to the rest of the crew about the gold, Mister Spinelli," I said deliberately, "Or you'll go to Callisto in irons. Is that clear?" "Aye, sir," murmured Spinelli. The black expression had left his face and there was a faintly scornful smile playing about his mouth as he turned away. I began wondering then what he had in mind. It wasn't like him to let it go at that. Suddenly I became conscious of being very tired. My mind wasn't functioning quite clearly. And my arm and hand ached painfully. I rubbed the fingers to get some life back into them, still wondering about Spinelli. Spinelli talked. I saw him murmuring something to big Zaleski, and after that there was tension in the air. Distrust. For a few moments I pondered the advisability of making good my threat to clap Spinelli into irons, but I decided against it. In the first place I couldn't prove he had told Zaleski about the gold and in the second place I needed Spinelli to help run the Maid. I felt that the Third Officer and Zaleski were planning something, and I was just as sure that Spinelli was watching Zaleski to see to it that there was no double-cross. I figured that I could handle the Third Officer alone so I assigned the rest, Marvin and Chelly, to accompany Cohn and Zaleski onto the hulk. That way Zaleski would be outnumbered if he tried to skip with the treasure ship. But, of course, I couldn't risk telling them that they were to be handling a vessel practically made of gold. I was in agony. I didn't want to let anyone get out of my sight with that starship, and at the same time I couldn't leave the Maid. Finally I had to let Cohn take command of the prize crew, but not before I had set the radar finder on the Maid's prow squarely on the derelict. Together, Spinelli and I watched the Maid's crew vanish into the maw of the alien ship and get her under way. There was a flicker of bluish fire from her jury-rigged tubes astern, and then she was vanishing in a great arc toward the bright gleam of Jupiter, far below us. The Maid followed under a steady one G of acceleration with most of her controls on automatic. Boats of the Martian Maid's class, you may remember, carried a six inch supersonic projector abaft the astrogation turret. These were nasty weapons for use against organic life only. They would reduce a man to jelly at fifty thousand yards. Let it be said to my credit that it wasn't I who thought of hooking the gun into the radar finder and keeping it aimed dead at the derelict. That was Spinelli's insurance against Zaleski. When I discovered it I felt the rage mount in me. He was willing to blast every one of his shipmates into pulp should the hulk vary from the orbit we'd laid out for her. He wasn't letting anything come between him and that mountain of gold. Then I began thinking about it. Suppose now, just suppose, that Zaleski told the rest of the crew about the gold. It wouldn't be too hard for the derelict to break away from the Maid, and there were plenty of places in the EMV Triangle where a renegade crew with a thousand tons of gold would be welcomed with open arms and no questions asked. Suspicion began to eat at me. Could Zaleski and Cohn have dreamed up a little switch to keep the treasure ship for themselves? It hadn't seemed likely before, but now— The gun-pointer remained as it was. As the days passed and we reached turn-over with the hulk still well within visual range, I noticed a definite decrease in the number of messages from Cohn. The Aldis Lamps no longer blinked back at the Maid eight or ten times a day, and I began to really regret not having taken the time to equip the starship with UHF radio communicators. Each night I slept with a hunk of yellow gold under my bunk, and ridiculously I fondled the stuff and dreamed of all the things I would have when the starship was cut up and sold. My weariness grew. It became almost chronic, and I soon wondered if I hadn't picked up a touch of space-radiation fever. The flesh of my hands seemed paler than it had been. My arms felt heavy. I determined to report myself to the Foundation medics on Callisto. There's no telling what can happen to a man in space.... Two days past turn-over the messages from the derelict came through garbled. Spinelli cursed and said that he couldn't read their signal. Taking the Aldis from him I tried to raise them and failed. Two hours later I was still failing and Spinelli's black eyes glittered with an animal suspicion. "They're faking!" "Like hell they are!" I snapped irritably, "Something's gone wrong...." "Zaleski's gone wrong, that's what!" I turned to face him, fury snapping inside of me. "Then you did disobey my orders. You told him about the gold!" "Sure I did," he sneered. "Did you expect me to shut up and let you land the ship yourself and claim Captain's share? I found her, and she's mine!" I fought to control my temper and said: "Let's see what's going on in her before deciding who gets what, Mister Spinelli." Spinelli bit his thick lips and did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the image of the starship on the viewplate. A light blinked erratically within the dark cut of its wounded side. "Get this down, Spinelli!" The habit of taking orders was still in him, and he muttered: "Aye ... sir." The light was winking out a message, but feebly, as though the hand that held the lamp were shaking and the mind conceiving the words were failing. "CONTROL ... LOST ... CAN'T ... NO ... STRENGTH ... LEFT ... SHIP ... WALLS ... ALL ... ALL GOLD ... GOLD ... SOMETHING ... HAPPENING ... CAN'T ... UNDERSTAND ... WHA...." The light stopped flashing, abruptly, in mid-word. "What the hell?" demanded Spinelli thickly. "Order them to heave to, Mister," I ordered. He clicked the Aldis at them. The only response was a wild swerve in the star-ship's course. She left the orbit we had set for her as though the hands that guided her had fallen away from the control. Spinelli dropped the Aldis and rushed to the control panel to make the corrections in the Maid's course that were needed to keep the hulk in sight. "Those skunks! Double crossing rats!" he breathed furiously. "They won't shake loose that easy!" His hands started down for the firing console of the supersonic rifle. I caught the movement from the corner of my eye. " Spinelli! " My shout hung in the still air of the control room as I knocked him away from the panel. "Get to your quarters!" I cracked. He didn't say a thing, but his big shoulders hunched angrily and he moved across the deck toward me, his hands opening and closing spasmodically. His eyes were wild with rage and avarice. "You'll hang for mutiny, Spinelli!" I said. He spat out a foul name and leaped for me. I side-stepped his charge and brought my joined fists down hard on the back of his neck. He stumbled against the bulkhead and his eyes were glazed. He charged again, roaring. I stepped aside and smashed him in the mouth with my right fist, then crossing with an open-handed left to the throat. He staggered, spun and came for me again. I sank a hard left into his stomach and nailed him on the point of the jaw with a right from my shoe-tops. He straightened up and sprawled heavily to the deck, still trying to get at me. I aimed a hard kick at his temple and let it go. My metal shod boot caught him squarely and he rolled over on his face and lay still.

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TROUBLE ON TYCHO By NELSON S. BOND Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc. "Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly. The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared. "Report ready, Jones?" "Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—" "Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all." "That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?" It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet. This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing. " Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds. The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking. "O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!" "I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice. Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously. "Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—" The Dome Commander's niece giggled. "That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice." "It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go." "That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar." "Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work. South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible. If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base. "Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units. Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence. "A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?" It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said, "Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?" "Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you." "O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else." Isobar bridled. "I don't know what you're talkin' about." "Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you." Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—" "Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here." "Yeah? What?" "Well, it's Roberts and Brown—" "What about 'em?" "They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs." "Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully. "Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes." "Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome. He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation. "Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?" Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—" "I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!" He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity: "Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?" "I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!" The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure. "Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?" "Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'" "Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!" Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then: "That is all," he concluded. "O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder. "Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!" "Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled. "How's that? I didn't say a word—" "Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?" "What? Why—why, yes, but—" "Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?" "Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people.... "Enough?" asked Sparks. Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!" "Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out. "Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar. "Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?" "Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily. "Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth." "It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees." Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin. "We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw." "I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—" "To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?" Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed. "N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—" "I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—" "Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly. "Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?" "Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir." "That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?" Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—" "I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?" "With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe." Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?" Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—" "It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!" "But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—" "But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure." He suddenly seemed to gain stature. "No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement." "But—" said Isobar. "No!" Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom— "Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—" "Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?" Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe. Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser. All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet: "They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—" "No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!" He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning. "Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—" But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity. "Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !" II "And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was." Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly. "It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar." "Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—" "Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle, "it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means 'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold. "It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...." "You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?" "Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?" "Below, I guess. In his quarters." "Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness." But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the "giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment. Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit. Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection. "So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!" And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside. On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman. Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety. "Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting." Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly. "Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?" Isobar's eyebrows arched. "You mean you haven't been notified?" "Notified of what ?" "Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?" "I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?" And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you." "We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like." "I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry." Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him. A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months! Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley.... How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed. It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol. He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret. And the shooting? That could only be— He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat. And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies! III Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man. "Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!" "W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?" "The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?" "Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!" He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that. Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call." "That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough. "But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!" For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony. Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings! Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm. "Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—" Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly. "You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—" But Roberts shook his head. "We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it." Isobar's last hope flickered out. "Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—" Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel. "Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!" Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?" "Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! " "Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle. Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies. "No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—" But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! " Roberts moaned. "Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!" And Brown stared at him hopelessly. "It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—" Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain. "It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building! "If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—" " Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! " "And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!" Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below. He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree. " Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones. IV And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt! As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning! So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis. "Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!" And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!" Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree. There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude. Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation. The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and— And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped, "Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!" And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio. He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below. "Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!" Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint: "After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"

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THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS By ERIK FENNEL On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers. It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing. In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open. The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers. Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence. The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him. Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness. Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky. "Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully. Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action. It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders. At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch. The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power. " There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady. Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate. Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind. "It must be cleared. From the outside." Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered. Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations. The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death. Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief. "I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty. Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man. "For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel. For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty. He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock. But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility. "Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness. For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand. Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive— The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations. Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here. First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor. Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt. Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible. But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions. On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell. Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials. Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions. Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end. She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt. But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires. The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate. Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed. But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship. He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action. Then it was done. As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations. Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk. "I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared. Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there." Barry unhitched his straps and sat up. "Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?" Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago." Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout." He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe. He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer. The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked! Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult. A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead. Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame. "You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!" The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied. Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order. "Airlock open. Both doors." Venusian air poured in. "For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped. "Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose. It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation. But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened. The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light. Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony! Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down. Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited. "Dorothy!" he said fervently. Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss. Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her. By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Water!" Barry croaked. The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs. "Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level." Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science." Barry lay still. "Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief." Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly. "What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?" "Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills." Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock. "But there must be—" Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion. II Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains. When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared. "Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began. "Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?" Nick nodded vigorously. "First cut that air conditioner and get the window open." Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief. It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing. "Got a pencil?" he asked. He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings. "Think you can get materials?" Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it." "Two days?" Nick looked insulted. He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready. Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor. Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features. "Perfect. Now put the window back." Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster. A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor. The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure. It was abnormal. But so was Barry Barr. With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body. After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits. But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal. Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony. Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze. Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered. One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold. Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries. The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous. Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source. Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid. In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics. The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury. Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts. The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact. Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared. But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition. Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him. "Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes. "Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?" "Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!" Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned. "I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly. "Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice. Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly. "I believe you, Barry." She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist. When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features. The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan. But even with his trickery Hind had lost. He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom. The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off. He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest. Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room. Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help. The door was locked! He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed. He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped. Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered. He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough! He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness. There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground. Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath. Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale. Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water. III Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus. Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers. Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids. For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim. Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off. He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer. He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction. He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank. Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless. Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward. Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman. Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder. Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing. Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working. Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage. It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt. Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close. Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp. Barry stared through the reddening water. Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively. But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind. One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord. One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break. He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out. Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously. Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly. The other one turned too late as Barry leaped. Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.

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VENUSIAN INVADER By LARRY STERNIG Leah Barrow would die. Tar Norn had sworn she would, unless he was set free. But freedom for the Venusian Pirate meant death for many, and it was Director Barrow's duty to hold him—even though it would cost his daughter's life. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mart Wells shut off the alarm buzzer and jumped out of bed—much to his regret. He cussed and then grinned sheepishly as he brought up with a thud against the fortunately unbreakable glass of the window. A year on Callisto, and he could still forget that he weighed only thirty-six pounds and couldn't take a normal step without neutronium-weighted shoes. Regaining his balance, he yawned and looked out over the rough Callisto landscape beyond Comprotown. Then he yawned again and reached for his uniform. A year before, Comprotown—and his job as rocketport dispatcher—had been Romance with a capital R. Now, he thought gloomily, Romance with Leah with a capital L, and a fat lot of good that did him when Leah Barrow's father was Old Fish-face himself, Director of Comprotown. True, Comprotown held fewer than a thousand colonists, but it was the only inhabited spot on bleak Callisto, and its Director was practical czar of a world. Yes, the Director could well afford to look down his long nose at any uniform with fewer than six stars on its right sleeve. But Leah didn't feel that— Suddenly, straightening up as he fastened his weighted boot, he looked more intently out of the window. Something that flashed caught his eye out in the barren, warped hills. A gleam of metal where metal shouldn't have been. And it looked like a small spaceship. Mart hastily pulled on his other boot and ran down the stairs. A red-headed mechanic from the rocketport was coming out of the building across the way. Mart called out, "Red! Something about a mile back in the hills looks like a spaceship. Has one been reported down?" "Huh?" The mechanic looked startled. "You sure? No, there hasn't been a report. Wait, I'll radio Central Communications." He darted back into the building, and emerged a moment later. "No report. They're going to send out the autogiro to look at it. Say, Mart, there are only two small spaceships on Callisto. Could it be—" Mart was already running toward the corner from which he could see the landing field. He stopped so suddenly that the mechanic almost ran into him, and said, "Whew! They're both there." Leah Barrow's trim little spacecruiser was safe in port. So was the Police one-seater scout—but that wasn't the one Mart had looked for first. From near the Administration Building a two-place autogiro was rising, silhouetted for a moment between the horns of the reddish crescent of big Jupiter just above the horizon. As he walked across the field toward headquarters, Mart surveyed the familiar scene. Three squat freighters were up on the racks, their ugly black bottoms over the ash-filled blasting pits; four others were on dollies ready to be serviced. All seven were ready for their regular weekly Callisto-Jupe hop, ready to pick up more ore. And, as usual, they'd go out today to clear the field for the sleeker, faster, long-haul ships that would arrive from Earth tomorrow for the smelted metal. Mart glanced at his wrist-chronometer. Eight o'clock now; in an hour and a half, Freighter One , right on schedule, would start testing its rocket tubes for the ten o'clock hop. And an hour later, Freighter Two would start to warm up for the eleven o'clock blasting-off. And then the others, every hour on the hour. At his desk in the Administration Building, Mart picked up the familiar sheaf of clearance papers waiting for his attention, and glanced through them. Initialing them was mere routine; they'd never cleared a minute early or a minute late since he'd been there. Director Barrow saw to that. The door opened. Mart put down the papers and glanced up. One of the workmen from the smelting plant, a tall black-haired fellow wearing tinted glasses, stood looking into the office. Mart didn't remember ever seeing him before—but with several hundred workmen, you couldn't remember all of them. "Director Barrow in?" Mart glanced up at the wall clock before he answered. "He'll be here in twenty-one minutes. Sit down and wait if you're off duty." He turned back to the papers and finished initialing them, grinning inwardly at being able to say that the Director would arrive in twenty-one minutes exactly. It wasn't everywhere that one could make so accurate a prediction about anyone's arrival time, but Barrow was something of a chronometer himself. He tossed the papers toward the back of the desk and threw the switch of the communicator on his desk, leaned forward slightly. "Dispatcher Wells calling Police Autogiro." "Autogiro, Captain Wayne," came the reply. "Go ahead. Mart." "I was the one who reported seeing the spaceship, Cap—if it was one. Found it? If not, I can—" "Thanks, Mart, but we've sighted it all right. We're now circling, looking for a spot to come down. It doesn't take much, but damned if we can perch on a ridge like a canary. Neither could that space-speedster down there. "Wrecked? What's it look like?" "Ummm. Offhand one of the single-place jobs that Venusians bought from Earth before the war. Full armament, too." "What? You sure, Cap? After the Earth-Venus twenty-two eighty treaty, we reclaimed and destroyed all the armed—" "Yeah, I know," cut in the Captain's voice. "All but a few that the Venusian renegades—the pirates—got off with before then. Well—we're going down. Corey's found a place not too far from it where he can set the giro down, or says he can." "If that's a pirate ship, Cap, be careful!" "Don't worry. We're armed. And the ship's pretty smashed up. Probably at least kayoed whoever was in it. Well, keep your key open and I'll call you back. We're down." Mart found the shipment chart and began to check off tonnage. That much he wanted to get out of the way before—but something was gnawing at the back of his mind. It took him a moment to trace what it was. Of course. The workman who was waiting for the Director was wearing tinted glasses. Tinted glasses on Callisto! It didn't make sense. The sun, half a billion miles away, gives only a twenty-fifth of the light that falls on Earth. Even when that light is augmented by Big Jupe, it isn't—Yes, it was the first time he'd seen tinted glasses in Comprotown. Curiously, he turned to glance at the seated workman. But the carrier wave of the desk communicator hummed and he forgot his visitor as Captain Wayne's voice boomed in. "Dispatcher Wells. Captain Wayne calling Dispatcher—" "Okay, Cap. Go ahead." "We've examined the spaceship. No one's in it, hurt or otherwise. It's a single seater. A pirate ship all right." "You sure? How can you be certain?" "Aside from the fact that it would have no business around here if it wasn't, the papers are a give-away. There's a whole sheaf of them. Reports on the Ganymede jewel shipments mostly. And a full set of data on our own little world, Mart. If there's a Venusian around, he sure knows his way." "Dope on Callisto? What kind?" "A detailed map of Comprotown, showing every building. A full schedule of freighter hops both ways to Jupe and Earth. Details of shipments. That sort of thing." "Holy stars! But why should a pirate be interested in ore?" "Don't imagine he is. Or in Comprotown, either. I'd say from the papers, it was precautionary information. We don't keep our operations a secret here. He could have picked it up from any magazine article describing Comprotown in detail. "But I still don't see—" "The Ganymede jewel shipments, Mart. I'd say he was bound for Gany and his ship went blooie while he was scudding past Callisto. He got pulled down here and just barely made a landing he could walk away from. I'm afraid there'll be trouble." Mart whistled. "Well, the Director's due now. He'll want a search organized and—Wait, here he is. Tell it over again, Cap, and you'll be reporting direct.... Listen to this, Director." The tall slender figure of Director Barrow stood impassively beside Mart's desk and listened to a repetition of Wayne's report. Not a flicker of expression passed over his gaunt face. As Wayne finished, the Director asked, "Is he armed? Anything taken from the ship's equipment, Captain?" "Looks intact, but he probably has sidearms. All the pirates carry them. One funny thing, Director. The timer robot has been removed from the control panel. What on Callisto would he want with a loose timer?" "Report back to headquarters immediately, Captain Wayne," Director Barrow ordered. The hum of the carrier wave died and Mart clicked off the set. Then, belatedly, he stood up and saluted. "Anything I can do, sir? Everything's set for the freighters to clear as usual, so I'm more or less free—" Barrow nodded. "Very good, Wells. You may go to the field and direct a search of the freighters. The Venusian's first thought will be to get away, and he may already be stowed in one of—" A dry voice interrupted from behind the Director's back. "But the Venusian would not do anything so obvious, Director Barrow." Mart whirled around. Barrow turned slowly and with dignity. It was the tall man dressed in the uniform of a smelting plant worker who had spoken. But he wasn't dark-haired any more. Still seated, he was smiling at them sardonically as he fanned himself with a black wig he had just removed. The top of his head was as smooth as a billiard ball, and dead white. There was a line of demarcation where the dye he had applied to his face came to an end. He had removed the tinted glasses too, and the blank-surfaced gray eyeballs showed why they had been worn. Now that the simple disguise of wig and glasses was removed, Mart noted some of the other distinguishing features that marked the Venusian. The general flatness of the face and flat unconvoluted ears. The six-fingered hands that had probably been thrust into the pockets of the stolen uniform. The Venusian glanced down at the wig and glasses. "Standard equipment," he explained. "I always carry them in my ship and they've come in handy before." He rose and bowed mockingly. "My name is Tar Norn, and your supposition that I am a pirate is correct. But I assure you that my visit here is accidental and I have no designs on Comprotown." Tar Norn! The most vicious and notorious of the pirates, and the most ruthless killer of them all. Mart hastily jerked open the drawer of his desk and pulled out a hand-blaster. He started the formula: "Under authority of the Interplanetary Council, I arrest you, to be held for trial—" The sardonic smile did not fade from the pirate's thin lips. He rose and extended his arms upward. "I am unarmed," he cut in. "It will help our discussion if you will verify that." "—before the Supreme Council on Earth," Mart finished. Then, glancing side-wise at Director Barrow and seeing him nod, he stepped forward warily. Venusians, he knew, were both fast and tricky. Watching every move, he completed the search. Tar Norn carried no weapons. Why, Mart wondered, had the pirate walked openly into headquarters and given himself up? Obviously, Tar Norn had something up his sleeve. But— Director Barrow spoke coldly, as Mart stepped back, still covering the Venusian with the blaster. "Tar Norn, you speak of 'our discussion.' There is nothing to discuss. You will be sent to Earth." The pirate's face became vicious. "I do not think so," he snapped. "I have taken a hostage. It was quite dark—your tiny Callisto in eclipse of its huge primary—when I was forced down. But darkness means nothing to a Venusian. You Earthmen play a strange game with cardboard rectangles. To use its language, Director Barrow, I have an ace in the hole." Tar Norn sat down again and folded his six-fingered hands quite calmly. Light from the ceiling overhead seemed to cast a malignant glow on his dead-white scalp. "Your daughter, Director," he continued. "If you wish to see her again, you will give me a ship, your fastest ship." There was a moment of dead, utter silence. Then Director Barrow leaned over the desk and flicked the key of the communicator. "Control? Get my—get Leah Barrow at once. Ring her room. If no answer there, get my housekeeper. This is Director Barrow." "Your fastest ship," repeated the Venusian. "Well stocked with supplies. Enough to take me to—to a place in the Asteroid belt. I shall be too late now to carry out my original plans on Ganymede." The office door opened and Captain Wayne came in, followed by Roger Corey. Their eyes widened as they saw the Venusian. Wayne's hand darted toward his holster, then relaxed as he saw Mart's blaster trained on the pirate. He faced Director Barrow and saluted. "Captain," Barrow ordered, "you will form a search party at once—every available man and means. We must search all of Callisto within—" he made a rapid mental calculation "—about fifty miles. You will be searching for my daughter." The captain stiffened. Before he could reply the carrier wave hummed and a feminine voice, that of an elderly woman, came over the communicator. "Director Barrow? Leah isn't here. I looked in her room and her bed is disarranged as though she left suddenly. She always makes it herself as soon as she gets up." "Anything to point to when she left, Mrs. Andrews?" "Not exactly, sir. The alarm was set for six and it was still buzzing. Her bed isn't very mussed; it looks like she got up again almost right after she retired. I don't understand." Director Barrow's face was bleak. His voice sounded like the drip of water from melting ice. "Clothing?" he asked. "Her lightweight spacesuit is gone. Apparently she put it on over her sleeping pajamas, for they aren't here. Is there anything I can do, sir? I'm worried; she hasn't ever—" "That will be all, Mrs. Andrews," Barrow replied. "I'll let you know if there is anything." He turned to Captain Wayne. "Use this set, Captain. Get Communications to send out a general alarm and assembly. You can make all necessary arrangements right here." Wayne crossed to the communicator, and began to issue rapid instructions. "Tell them to hurry," the Venusian cut in mockingly. "They have until nine-thirty o'clock." Mart Wells glanced fearfully at the dial of the chronometer. It was eight-forty now. He turned and caught the Director's glance. " The timer! " he said grimly. "Captain Wayne said it was missing from the wrecked ship. He must have—" The Venusian was grinning. "Exactly. The timer. And a pound of uranite. That gives you fifty minutes to search Callisto. It would be wiser to spend the time getting a ship ready for me instead." The silence of the office was broken only by the low voice of Captain Wayne giving orders into the communicator. Abruptly he turned to his superior. His face was white. "Search is on, sir. But if he isn't lying, there's a chance in a million. Less than an hour, and the area to be covered is—" Barrow was looking straight ahead, and not a muscle of his face moved until he spoke. "I'm afraid he isn't bluffing. No reason why he should be. Leah is gone and the timer is gone. And a pirate ship would have uranite." "The ship?" asked Tar Norn. "It will take some time to fuel it and—" Director Barrow's voice was positive. "There will be no ship for you, Tar Norn." Roger Corey's voice cut in, jerkily. "Let me work on him, sir. Me and Wayne. Maybe we can make him talk." Barrow shook his head. "No use, Corey. Venusians don't mind pain as much as Earthmen. They almost like it. You could take him apart, and he wouldn't talk." The pirate's smile faded. "It will take half an hour to prepare the ship, Director Barrow. Better not stall too long." Mart said, his voice urgent. "But, sir, Leah ! What's one pirate compared to—" Barrow's face was granite-like. "He's killed hundreds of people. If we release him, he'll kill hundreds more. One life cannot weigh against that. Corey, take him away. Lock him up until the next ship leaves for Earth." Mart's fists were clenched, his fingernails biting into the palms. But he knew Barrow was right; that he couldn't possibly take any other course and be worthy of his post. One life couldn't weigh against the many lives that meeting the pirate's terms would mean. That was where Tar Norn had miscalculated. A Venusian didn't understand responsibility to society, nor any higher ideal than self-interest. Tar Norn tossed the wig and glasses to the floor as Corey took his arm. His pupil-less eyes seemed to glow with anger. "You won't murder your own daughter, Director. This is a bluff. But mine isn't. She dies at nine-thirty unless you find her. I swear that by the Eternal Varga ." Mart cursed. Fists balled, he lunged toward the Venusian. Barrow put a hand on his arm. "Don't, Wells. That's up to the Interplanetary Council." "But he's not bluffing," Mart raved. "Leah will surely die at nine-thirty. That damned oath. Varga. It's the only thing a Venusian is afraid of. He isn't—" His voice broke. Corey started off with the Venusian. Barrow said, "Yes, he's telling the truth. But we have some time yet. Maybe the search—" Mart strode to the window and looked out so the others wouldn't see his face. Less than three-quarters of an hour to search all of Callisto within a radius of fifty miles! Through the pane he saw figures in groups of three searching the streets and buildings of Comprotown. That part of the search wouldn't be difficult. But the hills and the caves, and with only two autogiros. If she was there, out of sight in one of the caves, where the cruising ships couldn't see her.... Her father was right, but—The picture of Leah Barrow, smiling as he had last seen her, seemed to blur out the view from the window. Her impertinent little tilted nose, the soft tempting contours of her lips, the deep blueness of her eyes. He whirled from the window and began pacing the floor, trying to think of something they could do that wasn't being done. Again at the communicator, Captain Wayne was barking questions. "All available men and women are combing the town, sir," he reported, "with orders to break down any doors that are locked, to stop at nothing." "And outside, Captain?" "The two giros are our only real hope. But the men from the smelting plant are working afoot out of town. By nine-thirty they'll have covered a radius of about five miles." Corey returned, slamming the door viciously behind him. "Maybe we could trick him, sir," he suggested. "Pretend we'll give him a ship if he'll—" "A Venusian wouldn't trust his own mother," Barrow snapped. "He'd insist on taking off first and then radioing back where she is. And don't think he wouldn't check the fuel tanks." "I wish you'd let me and Wayne work on him, anyway." Director Barrow didn't answer. Mart growled, "If Leah dies, I'm going to take that filthy pirate and—" Wayne's voice was bitter. "Venusians can't help what they are. Blame the Earth council that sold them those ships. If they had used more sense, there wouldn't be a Venusian off Venus." Mart nodded. If the council hadn't pulled that boner twenty years before, there would be no trouble with the Venusians. Venusians were, compared to Earth standards, a strange combination of genius and idiocy. Brilliant mathematicians, they had no mechanical ingenuity whatever. Linguists who could speak any language fluently after hearing it a few hours, not one of them could create a child's wind-up toy. Knowing the laws of leverage, they constructed their buildings by manual labor alone. Able to operate any machine as long as it was in good working order, they couldn't as much as figure out how to repair a clogged fuel-line. Even the pirates based on some of the bigger Asteroids had to depend upon a few renegade Earthmen to keep their ships in running order. And if one went blah away from base, it was a gone ship as far as they were concerned. Probably the trouble that had forced Tar Norn down on Callisto had been a minor matter that any Earthman could have taken in his stride. But to Tar Norn it meant a new ship or nothing. The thought of ships reminded him of the freighters. "Cap," he asked Wayne, "the freighters been searched thoroughly?" Wayne nodded. "Rocket tubes and all. Even broke open the ore drums. I presume you'll want them to clear on schedule?" Director Barrow nodded. "The crews?" he asked. "In the search or standing by?" "Standing by for departure as usual, Director. A few men one way or the other—" Barrow nodded, glancing at the chronometer. Mart knew what he was thinking. Less than half an hour now. And, unless the searchers by some miracle found Leah Barrow, it would all be over before the ten o'clock clearance of the first freighter. And the freighters hadn't missed a clearance in ten years. The carrier wave hummed again. "Central Communications reporting. Most searchers in the town have reported in. No results. Those outside reaching points three miles out." The communicator faded. Mart clenched his fists against the futility of that search. Three miles! The strong Venusian, in the light gravity of Callisto, probably had eight or ten hours of darkness to carry his burden. He could easily have covered twenty to forty miles, in any direction. Possibly even more. And the chance of an autogiro— Obviously, Wayne had been thinking the same thing. "He timed his arrival," he said bitterly. "He gave us less than an hour. He'd certainly have put her outside walking range within that length of time. And with all the caves around, thousands of them, would he have put her where a giro could spot anything?" Mart glanced at Barrow. The Director was sitting as immobile as a statue. His eyes were closed and every muscle of his thin face was tense. Probably he was trying not to look at the chronometer on the wall. It was nine-fifteen. The office door opened and three uniformed mechanics from the field stood in the doorway. The foremost of them saluted. "This entire building has been searched twice except this office. I presume—" Director Barrow opened his eyes and stood up. "Don't presume anything. Search here, too." The men came in and began a detailed but fruitless search. Nobody spoke until they left. The chronometer said twenty minutes after nine now. Ten minutes to go, if the timer had been accurately set. But could it have been set wrong? Venusians were lousy mechanics. Maybe— Mart became aware that he was holding his breath for the sound of a distant explosion. Yes, from whatever point Tar Norn could have hidden his hostage, the sound of a pound of uranite exploding would carry back to Comprotown. He sat down at his desk again. In front of him were the signed clearance papers for the freighters. In half an hour he'd take out the papers for the first freighter. But before that half hour was up— He twisted a pencil between his fingers, held himself rigid to keep from turning and looking at the chronometer again. It hadn't been over a minute since he sat down—why torture himself by looking again? But each minute now seemed both a flash and an eternity. He turned over the sheaf of papers and drew a little square on the blank reverse side of the bottom one. That was Comprotown. He made a dot an inch or two away. That was the point where Tar Norn's ship had wrecked itself in landing. He drew a line from the point to the square. That was Tar Norn coming in to the town. That would have been about ten hours ago. Then, from the information about Callisto and Comprotown that had been in the papers in Tar Norn's ship, the pirate had found the home of the director. He would have had no trouble finding Leah's room. Venusians could see in the dark and walk as silently as cats. He would undoubtedly have drugged Leah into unconsciousness, probably without awakening her, since there had been no sign of a struggle. He'd put her into the lightweight spacesuit. Why? Undoubtedly it indicated that she would be outdoors. During the Callisto day, it would have been unnecessary. But an unconscious Earthwoman would freeze to death in the cold dark period of Callisto's eclipse behind Big Jupe. What then? The Venusian left, carrying her— The Venusian had carried the drugged girl into the night. He threw down the pencil and began to pace the room again. His muscles were tense from listening. How many minutes? He didn't want to know; dared not look. But Tar Norn must have planned it all before he left the wrecked ship. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken the timer and— Would he have rigged the time-bomb first, or after he had kidnapped Leah? And how? The timer itself would not have provided the concussion to set off the uranite. He'd have needed a battery, a spark-coil, and— But Venusians weren't mechanics. They didn't understand machines, or electricity, or even simple clockworks, brilliant as their strange minds were in other ways. Tar Norn could have set the timer all right. For that matter, he could calculate an orbit and make settings for space flight. But he couldn't have made a time-bomb, even with the timer. He couldn't have rigged a circuit that would set off a cap! And, Mart realized suddenly, the timer itself would be an electrical—not a clockwork—gadget. Once disconnected from the now broken dynamo of the ship, Tar Norn couldn't have made it run at all! A momentary surge of elation swept Mart. Tar Norn must have been bluffing! Then he remembered: a Venusian might murder his own family, but he would never swear to an untruth by the Eternal Varga. That one superstition, or religion, as they looked upon it, was binding beyond all else. And Tar Norn had sworn by that oath that Leah Barrows would die at nine-thirty unless— Mart looked at the chronometer. It was twenty-six minutes past nine. He caught a glimpse of Director Barrow's face. It looked like the face of a dead man. Barrow had obviously given up all hope and waited only for the four minutes to pass. The carrier wave hummed. All of them started, but the voice from the communicator merely reported, "All Comprotown reports in. All negative. Giros report nothing. Foot parties five miles out. Reports negative." Three minutes to go. Mart could see by the attitude of the others that they were bracing themselves for the sound of an explosion. All of them had liked, or loved, Leah Barrows. Mart had a momentary vision of her again, and remembered the electric thrill that had run through him when she had placed her hand on his arm, just a few days ago, and told him that she did care for him, well, a little anyway— But, if Tar Norn couldn't have rigged a time-bomb, how could he have arranged for Leah to die at nine-thirty? He saw again the corpse-like face of the Director. Yes, they had all been wrong in thinking that nothing mattered to Barrow more than the schedules— Schedules ! There had been departure schedules among the papers in Tar Norn's ship. Could he have— With a sudden intake of breath that was almost a gasp, Mart whirled and ran to the communicator. The others looked at him, startled. Mart was yelling at the mike even before he got near enough to it to talk in a normal voice. "Control! Emergency! Get Jupe Freighter One ! Tell him not to test his tubes. Not to touch a lever!"

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30062

THE PLAGUE By TEDDY KELLER Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States! Illustrated by Schoenherr Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip. Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection." All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin. "I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge." "But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg." Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out." "But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word. "Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through. "There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through." Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office. Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said. "Brass give you much trouble?" "Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?" "I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time." "Thanks. Sit down." She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes. "Any water reports?" Andy asked. "Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it." Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?" "It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary." "What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?" "In food?" "How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?" "On the wind?" "But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?" Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?" "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know." For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers. "We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington." Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory. He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends. It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers. "Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office. Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk. "RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled." Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely. "Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation." Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder. "Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that." A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—" "All right," Andy said sharply. For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said, "You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work." "Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual, "insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—" "Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—" "That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action." Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth. "But you can't—" "Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep." "But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—" "Corporal!" the colonel roared. And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?" The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—" "I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone." "But, general, I—" The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face. "Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?" Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess." The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared." Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him. "I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works." "A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it." "It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within." The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?" Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him. Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation." The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here." "But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—" The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work." The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in. She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked. Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said. "From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick." "I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital." "But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged. "Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?" Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out." "Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses." "That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?" "Nor a single postal worker." Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—" He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out. Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down." "What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico." "Writers?" "Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit." "This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that." Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley." "Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together." "What does it show?" "Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin. "If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?" "Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public." "Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit." "Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases." "And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head. Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk. Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily. "It's here somewhere, but we can't find it." "The answer?" "Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—" In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed. Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab." It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede. "It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water." The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis." "Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?" She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic." "Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet." Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed. "Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile. "What time is it?" Janis asked weakly. Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take. One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her. "I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...." Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in." "What did you do then?" Andy asked. "I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all." "And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?" "Nothing," Janis said too quickly. Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help." "But ... but...." "Was it something against regulations?" "I ... I don't know. I think...." "I'll vouch for your job in this office." "Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother." Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here." Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes. "Did you mail it?" "Y ... yes." "You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?" "Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob. "Did I do wrong?" "No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now." The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl. Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and.... "Hey, wait!" Andy yelled. Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast." The technician darted out. Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything." Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy. It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers. "Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?" Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't. "The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen." The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp. Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful." "The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—" "At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?" "Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—" He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard. "But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped." The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow. "But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick." Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge." The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?" Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand. "And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars." But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes. And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard. THE END

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MORLEY'S WEAPON By D. W. BAREFOOT Out of the far reaches of the universe sped the meteor swarm, cosmic question marks destined for annihilation in the sun. But one, approximately half a pound of frozen destruction, had a rendezvous near Japetus with Spaceboat 6. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It was comfortably cool in the functional, little control room, but Morley was sweating, gently and steadily. His palms were wet, and the thin thoughtful face, shining in the glow of the instrument panel light, was wrinkled in an agony of concentration and doubt. He was trying to choose between the Scylla of waking Madsen with a corollary of biting contempt involved, and the Charybdis of attempting to land single handed on Japetus, less than five hundred miles below. Neither course was appealing. For the hundredth time he pondered miserably over the sad condition of what had been a reasonably well ordered existence. The worst of it was that he had only himself to blame, and he knew it. No one had forced him to leave a comfortable, if poorly paid position with General Plastics, and fill out an employment card at Satellites, Inc. He could not explain the obscure compulsion that sparked his little personal rebellion. He didn't know, or need to know that other generations of Morleys had fought in revolutions, or sailed in square riggers, or clawed gold from mountainsides. When he went to the spaceline, the puzzlement of his few friends was profound, but hardly more so than his own. And now, after almost a year of upheaval and change, he was piloting a spaceboat along an involute curve ending on the surface of Saturn's eighth moon. And he was still puzzled. Satellites, Inc., had done as well as possible with the raw material known as Morley, Vincent, No. 4628. His psychograph indicated a born subordinate, with a normal I.Q., reasonably stable and trustworthy though below average in initiative. They didn't inform him of this, or the fact that they had analyzed the neurosis which had driven him to the spaceline, and which had created by that very action the therapeutic aid he needed. Many spacemen had similar case histories. It was those who fought the compulsion who sometimes turned down dark pathways of the mind. For six months he attended cadet school, and graduated in due time, fourteenth in a class of fifty. The next day he was assigned as fourth engineman to the space freighter Solarian , bound to Port Ulysses, Titan, Saturn system, with a cargo of mining machinery and supplies. They blasted off from Chicago Spaceport on a raw March midnight. Just another rocket take-off, routine stuff, now. But have you ever seen it? The night, the wind, the distant city glow in the sky? On the strip squats the massive bulk of the rocket, loading hatches closed, sealed port holes gleaming through the gusts of rain that sweep the field. In the sound proofed spaceport control tower the officials are relaxed over coffee and cigarettes; their part is over; they sit watching. Somewhere in the mighty shell on the field, chronometer hands reach the calculated second, a circuit closes, relays chatter briefly. The rocket igniters are firing, flame billows over the field, a low rumble from the tubes builds to a throbbing roar. Twenty miles away a housewife looks up, a question on her face. Her husband listens and smiles. "It's the Saturn rocket. It's here in the paper, under Departures." On the field the roar rises to an insane bellow of sound. Under the mighty jets, the ten feet of concrete and the solid earth beneath it are shaking. In the insulated control tower a water glass dances in its holder. The watchers are not relaxed now; they lean forward. It's old stuff, routine, precalculated to a fraction of a second, but—watch. There—a stir—movement. Slowly at first, with a deliberate and awful majesty, then faster and faster. Straight toward the zenith the ship rises, trailing fire. Faster yet, hurling herself upward, under full power, through the last threads of atmosphere. Upward and onward, out past Roches limit, out where gravity dwindles toward zero, into the empyrean where the shades of dead spacemen cruise the cosmos in their phantom craft, spaceborne in the night. After he had recovered from the pangs of his initial attack of space nausea, Morley enjoyed himself. He had one minor social asset, a retentive mind, well stocked with general information. If the two apprentices got involved in an argument over the identity of the highest peak in America, Morley was the inevitable arbiter. He could with equal facility name the author of a recent best seller, or inform you that a young seal was a cub, a young hare, a leveret, and a young swan, a cygnet. He was fairly popular with the crew, except for a big Norwegian from New York, named Olaf Madsen. Madsen was a chunky, hard bitten veteran of the spaceways. Round faced, deceptively soft spoken, he had a penchant for practical jokes, and a flair for biting sarcasm which found full expression in the presence of any first tripper. He made the life of any apprentice miserable, and finished the last two weeks of one trip in the brig for panicking an entire crew by painting his face to resemble the onset of Martian blue fever. Morley considered him an oaf, and he considered Morley a human filing cabinet with a weak stomach. A little notice on the bulletin board was Morley's first inkling that his safe, secure routine was on the verge of mutating into something frighteningly unpredictable. "All personnel not on duty will report to the recreation room at 1900 hours, Solar time, to draw for side trip partners and destinations," it read. He buttonholed the crew messman. "What's all this about side trips, Oscar?" Roly poly Oscar looked at him incredulously. "The lay over trips. The time killer. On the level, don't you know?" Morley shook his head. "Well," Oscar told him, "We leave Earth shortly before Saturn is in opposition. They figure on the shortest possible run, which takes three months. If we discharge and start right back, the round trip would take about six months. That's fine, except that the synodic period for Earth and Saturn—Hey, you know what I'm talking about?" Morley admitted his ignorance, vaguely annoyed at the fact that for once he was the humble seeker for information, and someone else was being professorial. Oscar grinned. "And you studied astrogation! Well, when Saturn and Earth line up with the Sun, it takes three hundred and seventy eight days before they get in the same position again. So if we got back to Earth's orbit in six months, we'd still have about a hundred and eighty millions of miles to go, because Earth would be on Sol's other side at that time, in superior conjunction to Uranus." Morley digested this, while Oscar basked in the light of his own knowledge, enjoying himself hugely. "And the trips, Oscar?" "We lay over three or four months, 'til opposition time isn't too far away, and we pick partners and destinations by lot, and go out to Saturn's other moons on prospecting trips—ore deposits, jewels, botanical specimens, etc.—half for us, and half for the Company. It's a good deal, a regular vacation, and those two-men craft are sweet stuff. And if you're lucky—" He went on, but Morley heard no more. The prospect unnerved him. He was terrified at the idea of changing a safe subordinate position for that of an active partner, however temporary the arrangement might be. At the drawing, his hunch of impending misery proved all too real. He wound up facing the prospect of a stay on the frozen hell of Phoebe, scouring the miniature mountains for Japori crystals, with Madsen, MADSEN! for his only companion. A week later the Solarian teetered down to a landing at Port Ulysses. With various expressions of profane and unbounded delight from her crew, she was turned over to the stevedores and the maintenance gang. Thereafter, at intervals, the thirty foot space boats took off for Mimas, Tethys, Dione, or whatever waystop the lottery had decreed. Madsen and Morley left on the fourth 'night,' with Phoebe hardly a week's run from them at ten miles a second. Madsen was at the controls. Without a single spoken word on the subject, he was automatically the captain, and Morley, the crew. The situation crystallized twenty-four hours out of Port Ulysses. Morley was poring over the Ephemeris prior to taking his watch at the controls when he became aware that Madsen, red faced and breathing heavily, was peering over his shoulder. Morley stiffened in alarm. "Is anything—" He quailed under Madsen's glare. "Not yet, but there's liable to be if you don't smarten up." The Norwegian's blunt forefinger stabbed at the page Morley had been studying. "Phoebe, Mister, happens to be Saturn's NINTH moon. Get it? You can count, can't you?" Morley flushed, and fumbled miserably for a reasonable excuse. There was a gleam of contempt in Madsen's eyes, but he spoke again more quietly. "I'm going to eat and catch up on some sack time. We'll be right on top of Japetus in short order. It's a known fact that the moon won't move over if you fly at it, so you better wake me up to handle the compensating!" He disappeared into the tiny galley, but his words were still audible. "It's an awful long walk back, chum, if anybody pulls a bull." Morley swung himself into the pilot's seat, too numb with humiliation to answer. Almost an hour passed before he started the regulation checkup required by the Space Code of any ship passing within one hundred thousand miles of a planet or major satellite. Every guardian needle stood in its normal place with one exception. The craft had been running on the port fuel tanks, depleting them to the point where it seemed wise to trim ship. Morley opened the valve, touched the fuel pump switch and waited, nothing happened. He watched the needles incredulously. The pump—? He jabbed the switch, once, twice. Nothing. He leaned forward and rapped the starboard gauge with his knuckles, sharply. The needle swung from Full to Empty. Morley felt faint as realization hit him. The starboard gauge had stuck at Full, and had been unreported. The tank had not been serviced in port, owing to the faulty reading and a mechanic's carelessness. They had about two hours fuel. Even to Morley, it was obvious that there was one thing only to do—land on Japetus, looming up larger in the view-plate with each passing moment. He checked the distance rapidly, punched the calculator, and put the ship in the designated orbit. He wanted to handle the landing himself, but the thought of the final few ticklish moments chilled him. So did the thought of waking Madsen, and asking him to take over. And it was then, at the intersection of two courses formed by an infinity of variables, that two objects arrived in the same millisecond of time. Eight ounces of nickel iron smashed into the stern of Spaceboat 6, ripped a path of ruin through her entire length, and went out through the two inch glass of her bow, before Morley could turn his head. He was aware, in a strange dream-like way, of actuating the midships airtight door, of the hiss of air as the little aneroid automatically opened valves to compensate for the drop in pressure, and of Madsen leaping into the control room and slapping a Johnson patch over the hole in the bow. Madsen was white but composed. "We can slow her down but we can't land her. Get suits while I take over. We'll ride as far as we can, and walk the rest of the way." He fought with the controls, as Morley, still bemused, obeyed. At twenty-five hundred feet they bailed out, and floating down seconds later, watched Spaceboat 6 crash into a low wooded hill. And when they landed, and inspected the wreckage, it was some minutes before either spoke. It was obvious at a glance that Spaceboat 6 was ready for the boneyard, had there been one around. The ship, under the few automatic controls that were still functioning, had sliced in at a thirty degree angle, ploughed a short distance through a growth of slim, poplar-like trees, and then crumpled completely against an outcropping granite ledge. Finally Morley gulped audibly, and Madsen laughed. "Well, Mastermind, any suggestions that might help us? Any little pearls of wisdom from the great brain?" "Just one," Morley answered. "Head for the Equator, and—" "And try to find a D.D. Correct. If we last that long. Let's salvage what we can out of this junk and shove off." Morley cleared his throat diffidently. "There are a few pieces of equipment we should take along, for—er—emergencies—" His voice trailed off miserably under Madsen's basilisk stare. "Listen, Morley, once and for all. We're lugging essentials and that's all. Any extra weight is out." "But, listen—" Madsen ignored the interruption, and cut loose with one last broadside. "Save your breath. It's bad enough being saddled with a useless little squirt like you, without being made into a pack mule unnecessarily." II He climbed into a gaping hole in the bow. Morley followed, humiliated but still thinking hard. Catalogue it, he told himself. Remember everything. The Distress Depots, or D.D.'s, as spacemen called them, were studded on every frontier world, usually on the Equator. They contained two small spacecraft plus ample supplies of food, medicine, and tools. When wrecked, get to a D.D. and live. It was that simple. They spent an hour worming their way through the shambles that had been the well ordered interior of Spaceboat 6, before emerging to take stock of their loot on the ground outside. Both men knew that they were pitifully equipped to cover several hundred miles, on foot, in a completely hostile environment. Suddenly Madsen looked up from the sextant he was examining. "How come this gravity, Brain? I weigh about a hundred right now, I figure, and that's too much, by plenty. Japetus isn't a quarter the size of our moon." "It's supposed to have a core of heavy radioactive metals," said Morley, thoughtfully, "and a corresponding high density. Keeps it warm anyway, instead of a big icicle, like Phoebe." "Phoebe!" Madsen laughed. "I remember, back in '89—" He stopped abruptly at a rattling from the ledge. A green, little lizard-like creature was scrambling frantically over the granite, while hot in pursuit were three—spiders? Black, they were, a black like living velvet, and incredibly fast as they closed in, beady stalked eyes fastened on their prey. They were deliberately herding the desperate lizard toward a cleft in the rock. As the creature leaped into the opening, another spider dove at it from the recess. The others closed in. There was a hopeless hissing, a vicious clicking of mandibles. The struggle subsided. Once again the day was silent. Madsen holstered the blaster he had drawn and looked whitely at Morley. "Pleasant pets," he grunted. "Poisonous and carnivorous, too," said Morley, shakingly. "I remember reading that Valdez dissected one when he first landed here twenty years ago. One of his crew was bitten, and died in less than five minutes." Madsen was thoughtful. "We could stand a little briefing on the local flora and fauna, but palaver won't get us to the Equator. And that little stock treatise entitled 'Physical Attributes of Phoebe' is worse than useless. Lucky the sextant is O.K., we can at least check our latitude. There's just one flaw." "What's that?" "Which way do we go when we hit the line? The D.D.'s are spaced ninety degrees apart. We might be within a hundred miles of one. If we head the wrong way, we'd have three or four hundred miles to go. There's no method of figuring our longitude." Morley was staring sunward, with thoughtful eyes. "Yes, there is," he said quietly. Madsen's jaw dropped. "Give," he said. "We both forgot something we know perfectly well. Notice the sun? It hasn't moved perceptibly since we landed. Japetus doesn't revolve on its axis." "So what?" "Two things. One, no night, since we're on the sunward side. The sun will move from side to side in the sky, reaching its lateral limits when Japetus is in quadrature in regard to Saturn. If we were here for a month, we'd see Saturn rise, make a full arc through the sky, and set. Let's hope for a shorter stay." "Go on," said Madsen, and suddenly there was nothing patronizing or scornful in his voice. "Two. We came in over the Pole almost exactly at inferior conjunction. Right?" "I think I get it." Madsen answered slowly. For a moment Morley was silent. He could almost smell the dingy classroom in Port Chicago, almost see the words on the examination paper in front of him. The paragraph leaped out, limned sharply in his mind. "Section 4, Subhead A, Solar Space Code. The initial Distress Depot on any satellite shall be situated, when practical, on the Prime Meridian. For the purposes of this act, the Prime Meridian of a satellite shall be the meridian that bisects the Sun when the Satellite is in inferior conjunction. Quarter mile belts shall be burned fifty miles to the North, South, East, and West as guides. Radio beacons will operate, unless impracticable due to atmospheric conditions, or other reasons." "We're on, or practically on the Prime Meridian right now," said Madsen. "A trek due South should hit D.D. No. 1 square on the nose. Right?" "Right. Two or three hundred miles to go. We might make it in two weeks." Madsen squinted at the stationary disk of Sol, hanging in the sky. "Let's load up and get started. The sooner we're on our way, the better." Both men had discarded their space suits, were dressed in the gray work clothes of Satellites, Inc. Equipment was easily divided. Each had a blaster, and a wrist compass-chronometer. Radio was useless on Japetus, and the little headsets were ruthlessly jettisoned. The flat tins of emergency food concentrate were stowed in two knapsacks. Madsen took charge of the sextant, and Morley carried a lightweight repeating rifle for possible game that might be out of blaster range. Canteens, a pocket first-aid kit, and a small heliograph, were the final items, except for several articles which Morley unobtrusively stowed away about his person. Less than three hours after the crash, the two men shouldered their burdens, took a bearing to determine their course, and headed into the south. In a matter of minutes Spaceboat 6 was out of sight. With Madsen leading, they threaded their way through the scant undergrowth. Underfoot the dry, broad-bladed grass rustled through a morning that had no beginning or end. Farther away were other and less easily explained rustlings, and once both men froze as a half-dozen of what looked like baby dragons arrowed past within yards of them. "Formation flying, like ducks," muttered Morley, watching from the corner of his eye. When the whispering of scaled wings had died away, the castaways resumed their steady plodding into the south. Twice they crossed small fresh water brooks, providing a welcome opportunity to drink their fill, and replenish the canteens. The going was easy, since the footing was in fairly dense soil, and the scrub was not so thick as to provide any difficulties. After eight hours of nearly continuous travel, they reached the banks of a third stream. Here Madsen stopped, and dropped his knapsack to the ground. "Campsite," he grunted. "Alabama," Morley murmured. Madsen goggled. "Are you delirious? What do you mean—Alabama?" Morley laughed sheepishly. "Alabama means 'Here we rest,' I said it without thinking." Madsen was grinning now. "What beats me is how you remember all that junk. I'd go nuts if I tried to clutter up my mind with a bunch of useless data. Alabama!" "I don't have to try to remember things," Morley said thoughtfully. "If I read or hear something that seems the least bit curious or unusual, it just sticks. And sometimes it's useful." "Such as?" "Well, remember when Storybook ran a mile last year in 1.29? He was the first to break 1.30. Some joe that knew a lot about horses gave me an argument in a bar about the first horse to break 1.40. He bet me ten credits it was Man o' War. I knew it was Ten Broeck, and I got an almanac and proved it." Madsen looked up from the tin of coffee concentrate he was opening. "Hasn't anyone ever tried to win an argument by poking you one in the snoot?" "Once or twice." Morley was almost apologetic. "But I learned judo a few years ago, just for the hell of it, so I didn't get hurt much." "You're a whiz with the sabre, no doubt?" said Madsen dryly. "No, I tried swordplay for a while, but gave it up. It's a little too, er—primitive for my tastes." "Primitive!" Madsen glanced around at the alien scene and nearly choked. "I'm crossing my fingers, but what would you do if some carnivore, or a gang of those spiders suddenly appeared and started for us with evil intentions?" "I think I'd run," said Morley simply. "It was pretty dull at General Plastic but at least the comptometers weren't man-eating." Madsen blinked, and seeming to find expression difficult, forbore to answer. They ate, and relaxed on the soft sod, lulled almost into a feeling of security. Not being foolhardy, however, they slept in six hour shifts. Morley stood the first watch, and slept the second. When he awoke, Madsen was tensely examining a ration tin. Jarred into instant alertness by a feeling of urgency and alarm, Morley leaped to his feet. "Something wrong?" Without answering, Madsen handed him the tin. It was pockmarked with inch wide patches of metallic gray fungus, from several of which liquid was seeping. There was a sharp odor of decay. Madsen was hastily dumping the contents of the knapsacks on the ground. Morley joined him, and both men commenced scraping the clinging gray patches from the tins. All but three were perforated and ruined. "We'll at least be traveling light from now on," Madsen said. "Any idea what this stuff is?" "Some of that lichen, or whatever it is, was around the scene of the crash," Morley answered. "The stuff must have an affinity for tin; probably secretes some acid that dissolves it. Only trouble is, it goes through thin steel too." Madsen commenced repacking their effects. "From now on, laddie, keep your eyes peeled for game, and if you see any, use that rifle. If we don't knock down some meat, and soon, we aren't going to make it. Might as well realize it right now." "Were you ever wrecked before, Madsen?" "Once, on Venus. Cartographic expedition." "What happened?" "Tubes blew and we made a forced landing. Wound up sitting in the middle of a pile of highgrade scrap." "What did you do then?" Madsen shouldered his knapsack and smiled condescendingly. "Not a thing, Mr. Fix-it. We didn't have to. Since I seem to have accidentally stumbled on something new and strange to you, add this to your files. It's usual on cartographic trips of any length, for one ship to go out, while another stays at a temporary base, and keeps in constant directional radio contact. If anything happens, they come a-running. Makes it fine for us uninformed common people." "Oh." "Of course, this is somewhat different. If we don't get out by ourselves, whoever finds us need only say, 'X marks the spot.'" Morley didn't bother answering. No comment was necessary. He knew as well as Madsen that whatever margin of safety they possessed had been shaved to the vanishing point. They made twenty miles in a forced march, slept, ate, and then traveled again. The stunted forest grew thinner, and occasionally they crossed open spaces acres in extent. Twice they saw, in the distance, animals resembling terrestrial deer, and on the second occasion Morley tried a fruitless shot. They slept and ate again, and now the last of the rations were gone. They went on. As they made southing, the dull sun crept higher in the sky by infinitesimal degrees. Now the going became tougher. Patches of evil looking muskeg began to appear in the scrub, and the stunted trees themselves gradually gave way to six foot ferns. There were occasional signs that some creature had been foraging on the lush growth. When they found fresh tracks in the soft footing, Morley unlimbered the rifle, and the two men trod more softly. By that time either would have cheerfully made a meal on one of the miniature flying dragons, alive and kicking, and the thought of a juicy steak from some local herbivore was as soul stirring as the sight of Mecca to a true believer. Both men whirled at a sudden crashing on their left. Something like a large splay footed kangaroo broke cover, and went loping away, clearing the fern tops at every bound. In one motion Morley whipped up the rifle and fired. There was an earsplitting report, the leaper kept right on going, under forced draught, and the two castaways stared in consternation at a rifle that resembled a bundle of metallic macaroni more than it did a firearm. Madsen spoke first. "You probably got some mud in the barrel when we stopped last time," he accused. "Look at us now." Morley started to mumble an apology, but Madsen cut him short. "Look at us now," he repeated, with all stops out. "It was bad before, now it's practically hopeless. Our only long range gun! What do we do now if we do find game—dig pits for it?" If a man can be said to slink without changing his position, Morley slunk. Madsen continued, double fortissimo. "A kid of ten knows enough to keep a gun clean, but you, Mr.—Mr. Unabridged Webster in the flesh—" He stopped, temporarily out of breath. Morley regarded him abjectly, and suddenly Madsen began to feel a little ashamed. After all, the fellow had figured out that business about the meridian. "No use in having any post mortems," he said, with fine logic. "Throw that junk away. It's that much less to carry, anyway." Two hours later, they plodded wearily through the last of the swamp onto higher ground. The two haggard, muddied figures that threw themselves on the dry soil to rest bore little resemblance to the men who had parachuted from Spaceboat 6 seventy-two hours before. The slope on which they rested was tufted with small bushes. One particular type with narrow dark green leaves bore clusters of fruit like small plums, which Madsen eyed speculatively. "Do we risk it?" he asked. "Might as well." Morley was completely unaware that he had just accepted the responsibility for making a decision. "We can't afford not to risk it," he said, adding, with little show of enthusiasm, "I'll be the guinea pig." "Take it easy, chum," Madsen countered. "We'll match for it." They matched and Morley called it wrong. He plucked a sample of the fruit and stood regarding it like some bewhiskered Little Jack Horner. Finally he broke the thin skin with his thumbnail and gingerly conveyed a couple of drops of juice to his tongue. The taste was simultaneously oily and faintly sweet, and after a short wait he essayed a fair sized bite. Madsen was about to follow suit, when Morley motioned him to wait. The next second he was rolling on the ground, coughing and choking, while Madsen tried grimly to feed him water from a canteen. It was no use. The throat tissues became swollen and inflamed in seconds, to the point of agony, and swallowing was totally impossible. To this was shortly added an overpowering nausea. When the retching finally stopped, Morley tried to speak, but in vain. Even the effort meant waves of pain. Madsen watched helplessly, and when the spasms of choking finally stopped, spoke gently. "We'll be camping right here for a while, looks like. Try to get some sleep if it slacks off any. You'll be okay in a while." His doubts were hidden, and Morley thanked him with his eyes.

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Saboteur of Space By ROBERT ABERNATHY Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships. Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight. Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive. The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America. The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face. Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened. "Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered. "No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd." The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—" Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you." He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply. The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl." Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'. "Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you." "What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol. The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?" " Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—" "Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark. Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air. "So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence. "I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight." Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!" The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury." Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes. "How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?" "Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?" "And why, Ryd?" "Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—" And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world. "Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun." Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents." "I know all about your record," said Mury softly. Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?" All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips. "Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him." Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily. Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes." "I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—" "To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?" Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm: "The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !" "What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?" Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now." Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly, "What's that mean?" "The power shell—isn't coming in as planned." "You can't do that." " We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?" Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We . The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth. "You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come. Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened.... After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?" Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa. II "One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard. The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery. Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America. "All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way." The rest of the way. Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast. "No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ." For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air. Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door. Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering. The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in. It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines. "Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead. They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa. As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them. And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower. Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough. And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now. "Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet. "Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively. "Martian soldier robots!" "They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy." Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?" "Where else?" said Mury. The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late. The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up. The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation. "Yes?" he inquired frostily. "What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—" "I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?" The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness. Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner. "I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us." The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous. Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal. "Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock. Nothing happened. "Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel. Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting." Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage. "Keep him covered. Back out of the lock." Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall. He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside. The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder. "You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock. Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel. "It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more." "It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock." He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded: "What do you think you're trying to do?" "What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?" "Yet Arliess." "You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?" The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do." III Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles. Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel. A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines. Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right. "You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun. Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?" Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?" The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks. Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light. "What's that, Arliess?" The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship." "I know that well enough. What ship?" "I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars." Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive." "I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady. "I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"

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QUEST'S END By BASIL WELLS Thig's quest was not yet finished, for the Hordes of Ortha had sent another ship across the Void. Only he could halt Earth's destruction—with a weapon that was but a thought in his mind. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "I was a fool," gritted Thig. His eye crowded the eyepiece of the compact metal case on the table before him. The window was open and the ugly metal snout of the instrument pointed toward the eastern horizon. "I should have expected the men of Ortha to send a second expedition to Earth!" Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from another distant world. Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans. For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life. And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha! He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare! For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot race that was the Horde. He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot through his squat body. "You're staying locked," he said slowly, "until the last Hordeman is wiped from the face of Earth." He smiled grimly as he reflected that his hero was trapped atop a waterless butte with a horde of Apaches howling below. "Hope you can stick it out for eight or nine weeks without water, Brazos," he said to the typed pages he was leaving. The life boat lifted sluggishly from the sands that had covered it for two years. Thig cleared each jet carefully, and then, finding them unharmed, he bored high into the stratosphere. Behind him the submarine patrol and the air-raid posts went mildly insane. They knew that some strange craft had roared up from the beach on Long Island, but they were never to know what it was. Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes. Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives. Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish. He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin. Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that explosives gave the only certain means of destruction. There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but submarines. Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore. The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions. Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife that he had whetted to razor sharpness. "You hear something?" asked one of the two guards. "It was the waves," his comrade said, listening for a moment. "In the darkness I can see nothing," grumbled the first Jap. "Perhaps the Marines are landing." "Ho," laughed the other guard, "the Marines are thousands of miles away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor." "It has been more than a year," said the fearful one, "and we have not yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are still hiding in the Solomons." "The radio does not tell you that," scoffed the guard. "We have sunk every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians to wait upon us." "Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?" The man's rifle thunked lightly against wood. "There were circles on its wings." "There may be a few left," was the excuse of the other guard. "Now we must cease talking and walk our posts." Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his servants, as he walked along. Abruptly great fingers clamped around his throat, and he felt the sting of something that slammed against his chest. His feet scuffed at the soil, and then a great roaring filled his ears. Thig eased the limp body to the earth. The other slim guard had halted, his nervously acute ears picking up some vague sound. "What—what was that?" he called to his comrade. Thig eased his blaster from its holster. In a moment the guard would arouse the other members of the garrison. The distance was too great for the knife—the man would be able to fire his rifle before he reached him. The weapon's invisible rays slammed the Jap's body backward. Even as he fell the flesh was falling, rotted by the blaster's swift decomposing action, from the man's bones. A moment later only the crumbling bones of a skeleton remained of what had been a soldier. He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of the Mikado. After that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships. His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser, already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into oblivion. Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick up the trylerium's characteristic radiations from the pitted walls of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of trylerium —and they would land nearby. That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill, and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody blundering way to a glorious future. But first he must bring back another load, the final link in the deadly ring about the landing place. Morning was at hand. He would have to work fast. He left the load where it lay and blasted off. The great bomber, with the circles painted on its wings, passed over the little island. It returned. The pilot shouted and bombs intended for a target several hundred miles to the south took their final plunge earthward. The ship was bullet-scarred—off its course—and since this was Japanese-dominated water his mistake was only natural. He took the caches of munitions for enemy supply dumps. It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew. Thig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth. As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play. Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth. Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the transmitter. A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde. "Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?" it demanded. "A fellow Hordeman from Ortha," replied Thig hurriedly. "I escaped from the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead, I took a lifeboat and escaped." "You are Thig?" said the even voice of the man from Ortha. "That is right," acknowledged the other. "Urol, commanding the second expeditionary flight to Sector 5-Z," the Hordeman identified himself. "With me are three others: Brud, Zolg, and Turb." "Zolg and Turb I know," said Thig. "We trained together." "Our detectors show that your location is in the largest body of water, near the eastern shore of the principal land mass of Planet 72-P-3. Is that correct?" "Right. There is room to berth five like yours upon this uninhabited island. Here we will be safe from the Mad Ones." Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words. And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being. "There is madness on this world then?" Urol asked. "That is right." Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to the Orthan ship. They must believe him.... "There is madness on this world, indeed," he went on, after a moment, "but it did not originate here. Kam and Torp, when they returned from the watery planet, Planet 72-P-2, brought back the virus of madness with them. Both of them were infected, and their brief stay on this planet served to spread the disease here also. "All over Earth, or as we call it, 72-P-3, the madness is spreading. Where there was peace and plenty there is now war and starvation. Most of this sub-human animal race will be wiped out before this madness has run its course." "Yet you escaped its ravages," Urol said. "Have you discovered how to control this madness?" "But I did not escape," Thig told him. "For many days after I returned to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes." "By the Law of the Horde," said Urol slowly, "you should be destroyed if the disease is incurable." "I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself." "It is good," agreed Urol. "We are preparing to land now." The communication link snapped between them. Above the island a tiny black speck swelled until it became a vast grubby bulk of metal supported by flaring jets of gaseous fuel. The thick ship slowed its sheer drop, and with a final burst of fire from blackened jets, came to rest. Thig looked to his decomposition blaster to see that it was thoroughly charged. This was perhaps the hundredth time he had examined his weapon. He chuckled at the ease with which the leader of the mother planet's ship had been tricked into believing his fantastic tale. All that remained now was to gain admission into the space ship. He left his own little life boat and walked toward the space cruiser. He reached the outer lock and attempted to open it. It was stuck. He tugged futilely at the pitted metal of the controls, and after a moment hammered at the door with a lump of volcanic rock. A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped the rock and listened. "Why do you attack the door?" it asked. "The lock is stuck," answered Thig. "No," the Hordeman's voice said, "the lock is not stuck. It is sealed against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3." "I cannot join you?" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering. "Naturally not!" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it was possible for an Orthan to display. "We can take no chances on the madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to Ortha." "I will tell you as much as I know," said Thig. "It is fortunate that I am outside the ship." "Yes," agreed the voice. "Better that one die instead of four. The resources of the Horde must be conserved." All through that first night after the space ship landed beside his little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy cruiser. Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter. Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and bombers would follow. He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed! He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis Terry to overcome his own entirely. No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human race to prevent any future revolt. But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any invasion from Ortha. He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story. With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward for Thig to finish his task. The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design. His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol. "They are the Mad Ones," Thig said. "Their madness causes them to fight among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter." "But why do they attack us?" asked Urol. "Our ship cannot be harmed by their containers of expanding gases!" "It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly." Thig smiled to himself. "I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with one of their own weapons." "That is unnecessary," said Urol, "our own armament...." Thig snapped off the receiver. He sprang to the controls, and sent the little ship rocketing skyward. He patted the heavy machine-gun that had been part of his loot from one of the sunken transports. It was mounted in the nose of his craft, and already it had knocked a score of Zeros and other Jap planes from the skies. He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's engine. One! Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow. His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone, whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans! Thig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground. Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely. The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth. He clicked open his transmitter. "You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha," said Urol. "We cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from the rest of us." "That is right," agreed Thig. "I should have killed myself before you came." He paused. "I should not have tried to warn you." "You are wrong again," Urol told him. "This madness destroys your reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many years." Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical, robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them. The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin. "We will return to Ortha with our reports at once," said Urol. Thig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that the Horde would bring. And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love with the dead man's woman! Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they would not recognize one! Earth was safe. "That is good," he said. "I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I will destroy the ship and myself." Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the great cruiser. He called the commander of the space cruiser then. "My fuel is almost exhausted," he said. "Prepare to dive into the Earth," said Urol in his emotionless voice. "We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power." "I am leaving now," said Thig. "May the Law of the Horde endure forever!" And under his breath: "on Ortha." Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would be the moment of impact. Friction was heating the metal skin of the ship slowly as it fell. Thig locked the controls; set the rocket relays for increasingly powerful thrusts of power, and waddled clumsily out through the lock into the frigid thin air of the stratosphere. He stepped out into emptiness. Inside the space suit it was warm, and the air was clean. When he had fallen a few miles farther he would open the glider wings, that were built into all Orthan suits instead of parachutes, and land on Long Island. But not until he was sheltered by the clouds from the view of the space cruiser. He was going back to Ellen and the children with the knowledge that Earth was saved from the Horde—saved by nothing more deadly than a lie! And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa, he would get to work on it....

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63932

THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS By ERIK FENNEL On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers. It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing. In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open. The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers. Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence. The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him. Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness. Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky. "Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully. Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action. It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders. At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch. The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power. " There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady. Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate. Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind. "It must be cleared. From the outside." Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered. Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations. The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death. Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief. "I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty. Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man. "For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel. For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty. He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock. But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility. "Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness. For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand. Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive— The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations. Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here. First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor. Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt. Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible. But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions. On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell. Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials. Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions. Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end. She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt. But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires. The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate. Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed. But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship. He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action. Then it was done. As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations. Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk. "I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared. Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there." Barry unhitched his straps and sat up. "Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?" Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago." Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout." He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe. He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer. The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked! Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult. A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead. Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame. "You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!" The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied. Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order. "Airlock open. Both doors." Venusian air poured in. "For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped. "Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose. It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation. But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened. The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light. Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony! Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down. Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited. "Dorothy!" he said fervently. Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss. Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her. By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Water!" Barry croaked. The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs. "Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level." Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science." Barry lay still. "Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief." Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly. "What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?" "Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills." Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock. "But there must be—" Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion. II Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains. When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared. "Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began. "Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?" Nick nodded vigorously. "First cut that air conditioner and get the window open." Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief. It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing. "Got a pencil?" he asked. He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings. "Think you can get materials?" Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it." "Two days?" Nick looked insulted. He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready. Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor. Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features. "Perfect. Now put the window back." Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster. A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor. The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure. It was abnormal. But so was Barry Barr. With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body. After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits. But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal. Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony. Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze. Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered. One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold. Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries. The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous. Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source. Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid. In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics. The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury. Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts. The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact. Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared. But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition. Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him. "Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes. "Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?" "Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!" Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned. "I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly. "Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice. Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly. "I believe you, Barry." She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist. When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features. The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan. But even with his trickery Hind had lost. He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom. The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off. He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest. Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room. Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help. The door was locked! He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed. He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped. Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered. He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough! He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness. There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground. Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath. Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale. Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water. III Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus. Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers. Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids. For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim. Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off. He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer. He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction. He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank. Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless. Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward. Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman. Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder. Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing. Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working. Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage. It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt. Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close. Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp. Barry stared through the reddening water. Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively. But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind. One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord. One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break. He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out. Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously. Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly. The other one turned too late as Barry leaped. Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.

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VENUSIAN INVADER By LARRY STERNIG Leah Barrow would die. Tar Norn had sworn she would, unless he was set free. But freedom for the Venusian Pirate meant death for many, and it was Director Barrow's duty to hold him—even though it would cost his daughter's life. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mart Wells shut off the alarm buzzer and jumped out of bed—much to his regret. He cussed and then grinned sheepishly as he brought up with a thud against the fortunately unbreakable glass of the window. A year on Callisto, and he could still forget that he weighed only thirty-six pounds and couldn't take a normal step without neutronium-weighted shoes. Regaining his balance, he yawned and looked out over the rough Callisto landscape beyond Comprotown. Then he yawned again and reached for his uniform. A year before, Comprotown—and his job as rocketport dispatcher—had been Romance with a capital R. Now, he thought gloomily, Romance with Leah with a capital L, and a fat lot of good that did him when Leah Barrow's father was Old Fish-face himself, Director of Comprotown. True, Comprotown held fewer than a thousand colonists, but it was the only inhabited spot on bleak Callisto, and its Director was practical czar of a world. Yes, the Director could well afford to look down his long nose at any uniform with fewer than six stars on its right sleeve. But Leah didn't feel that— Suddenly, straightening up as he fastened his weighted boot, he looked more intently out of the window. Something that flashed caught his eye out in the barren, warped hills. A gleam of metal where metal shouldn't have been. And it looked like a small spaceship. Mart hastily pulled on his other boot and ran down the stairs. A red-headed mechanic from the rocketport was coming out of the building across the way. Mart called out, "Red! Something about a mile back in the hills looks like a spaceship. Has one been reported down?" "Huh?" The mechanic looked startled. "You sure? No, there hasn't been a report. Wait, I'll radio Central Communications." He darted back into the building, and emerged a moment later. "No report. They're going to send out the autogiro to look at it. Say, Mart, there are only two small spaceships on Callisto. Could it be—" Mart was already running toward the corner from which he could see the landing field. He stopped so suddenly that the mechanic almost ran into him, and said, "Whew! They're both there." Leah Barrow's trim little spacecruiser was safe in port. So was the Police one-seater scout—but that wasn't the one Mart had looked for first. From near the Administration Building a two-place autogiro was rising, silhouetted for a moment between the horns of the reddish crescent of big Jupiter just above the horizon. As he walked across the field toward headquarters, Mart surveyed the familiar scene. Three squat freighters were up on the racks, their ugly black bottoms over the ash-filled blasting pits; four others were on dollies ready to be serviced. All seven were ready for their regular weekly Callisto-Jupe hop, ready to pick up more ore. And, as usual, they'd go out today to clear the field for the sleeker, faster, long-haul ships that would arrive from Earth tomorrow for the smelted metal. Mart glanced at his wrist-chronometer. Eight o'clock now; in an hour and a half, Freighter One , right on schedule, would start testing its rocket tubes for the ten o'clock hop. And an hour later, Freighter Two would start to warm up for the eleven o'clock blasting-off. And then the others, every hour on the hour. At his desk in the Administration Building, Mart picked up the familiar sheaf of clearance papers waiting for his attention, and glanced through them. Initialing them was mere routine; they'd never cleared a minute early or a minute late since he'd been there. Director Barrow saw to that. The door opened. Mart put down the papers and glanced up. One of the workmen from the smelting plant, a tall black-haired fellow wearing tinted glasses, stood looking into the office. Mart didn't remember ever seeing him before—but with several hundred workmen, you couldn't remember all of them. "Director Barrow in?" Mart glanced up at the wall clock before he answered. "He'll be here in twenty-one minutes. Sit down and wait if you're off duty." He turned back to the papers and finished initialing them, grinning inwardly at being able to say that the Director would arrive in twenty-one minutes exactly. It wasn't everywhere that one could make so accurate a prediction about anyone's arrival time, but Barrow was something of a chronometer himself. He tossed the papers toward the back of the desk and threw the switch of the communicator on his desk, leaned forward slightly. "Dispatcher Wells calling Police Autogiro." "Autogiro, Captain Wayne," came the reply. "Go ahead. Mart." "I was the one who reported seeing the spaceship, Cap—if it was one. Found it? If not, I can—" "Thanks, Mart, but we've sighted it all right. We're now circling, looking for a spot to come down. It doesn't take much, but damned if we can perch on a ridge like a canary. Neither could that space-speedster down there. "Wrecked? What's it look like?" "Ummm. Offhand one of the single-place jobs that Venusians bought from Earth before the war. Full armament, too." "What? You sure, Cap? After the Earth-Venus twenty-two eighty treaty, we reclaimed and destroyed all the armed—" "Yeah, I know," cut in the Captain's voice. "All but a few that the Venusian renegades—the pirates—got off with before then. Well—we're going down. Corey's found a place not too far from it where he can set the giro down, or says he can." "If that's a pirate ship, Cap, be careful!" "Don't worry. We're armed. And the ship's pretty smashed up. Probably at least kayoed whoever was in it. Well, keep your key open and I'll call you back. We're down." Mart found the shipment chart and began to check off tonnage. That much he wanted to get out of the way before—but something was gnawing at the back of his mind. It took him a moment to trace what it was. Of course. The workman who was waiting for the Director was wearing tinted glasses. Tinted glasses on Callisto! It didn't make sense. The sun, half a billion miles away, gives only a twenty-fifth of the light that falls on Earth. Even when that light is augmented by Big Jupe, it isn't—Yes, it was the first time he'd seen tinted glasses in Comprotown. Curiously, he turned to glance at the seated workman. But the carrier wave of the desk communicator hummed and he forgot his visitor as Captain Wayne's voice boomed in. "Dispatcher Wells. Captain Wayne calling Dispatcher—" "Okay, Cap. Go ahead." "We've examined the spaceship. No one's in it, hurt or otherwise. It's a single seater. A pirate ship all right." "You sure? How can you be certain?" "Aside from the fact that it would have no business around here if it wasn't, the papers are a give-away. There's a whole sheaf of them. Reports on the Ganymede jewel shipments mostly. And a full set of data on our own little world, Mart. If there's a Venusian around, he sure knows his way." "Dope on Callisto? What kind?" "A detailed map of Comprotown, showing every building. A full schedule of freighter hops both ways to Jupe and Earth. Details of shipments. That sort of thing." "Holy stars! But why should a pirate be interested in ore?" "Don't imagine he is. Or in Comprotown, either. I'd say from the papers, it was precautionary information. We don't keep our operations a secret here. He could have picked it up from any magazine article describing Comprotown in detail. "But I still don't see—" "The Ganymede jewel shipments, Mart. I'd say he was bound for Gany and his ship went blooie while he was scudding past Callisto. He got pulled down here and just barely made a landing he could walk away from. I'm afraid there'll be trouble." Mart whistled. "Well, the Director's due now. He'll want a search organized and—Wait, here he is. Tell it over again, Cap, and you'll be reporting direct.... Listen to this, Director." The tall slender figure of Director Barrow stood impassively beside Mart's desk and listened to a repetition of Wayne's report. Not a flicker of expression passed over his gaunt face. As Wayne finished, the Director asked, "Is he armed? Anything taken from the ship's equipment, Captain?" "Looks intact, but he probably has sidearms. All the pirates carry them. One funny thing, Director. The timer robot has been removed from the control panel. What on Callisto would he want with a loose timer?" "Report back to headquarters immediately, Captain Wayne," Director Barrow ordered. The hum of the carrier wave died and Mart clicked off the set. Then, belatedly, he stood up and saluted. "Anything I can do, sir? Everything's set for the freighters to clear as usual, so I'm more or less free—" Barrow nodded. "Very good, Wells. You may go to the field and direct a search of the freighters. The Venusian's first thought will be to get away, and he may already be stowed in one of—" A dry voice interrupted from behind the Director's back. "But the Venusian would not do anything so obvious, Director Barrow." Mart whirled around. Barrow turned slowly and with dignity. It was the tall man dressed in the uniform of a smelting plant worker who had spoken. But he wasn't dark-haired any more. Still seated, he was smiling at them sardonically as he fanned himself with a black wig he had just removed. The top of his head was as smooth as a billiard ball, and dead white. There was a line of demarcation where the dye he had applied to his face came to an end. He had removed the tinted glasses too, and the blank-surfaced gray eyeballs showed why they had been worn. Now that the simple disguise of wig and glasses was removed, Mart noted some of the other distinguishing features that marked the Venusian. The general flatness of the face and flat unconvoluted ears. The six-fingered hands that had probably been thrust into the pockets of the stolen uniform. The Venusian glanced down at the wig and glasses. "Standard equipment," he explained. "I always carry them in my ship and they've come in handy before." He rose and bowed mockingly. "My name is Tar Norn, and your supposition that I am a pirate is correct. But I assure you that my visit here is accidental and I have no designs on Comprotown." Tar Norn! The most vicious and notorious of the pirates, and the most ruthless killer of them all. Mart hastily jerked open the drawer of his desk and pulled out a hand-blaster. He started the formula: "Under authority of the Interplanetary Council, I arrest you, to be held for trial—" The sardonic smile did not fade from the pirate's thin lips. He rose and extended his arms upward. "I am unarmed," he cut in. "It will help our discussion if you will verify that." "—before the Supreme Council on Earth," Mart finished. Then, glancing side-wise at Director Barrow and seeing him nod, he stepped forward warily. Venusians, he knew, were both fast and tricky. Watching every move, he completed the search. Tar Norn carried no weapons. Why, Mart wondered, had the pirate walked openly into headquarters and given himself up? Obviously, Tar Norn had something up his sleeve. But— Director Barrow spoke coldly, as Mart stepped back, still covering the Venusian with the blaster. "Tar Norn, you speak of 'our discussion.' There is nothing to discuss. You will be sent to Earth." The pirate's face became vicious. "I do not think so," he snapped. "I have taken a hostage. It was quite dark—your tiny Callisto in eclipse of its huge primary—when I was forced down. But darkness means nothing to a Venusian. You Earthmen play a strange game with cardboard rectangles. To use its language, Director Barrow, I have an ace in the hole." Tar Norn sat down again and folded his six-fingered hands quite calmly. Light from the ceiling overhead seemed to cast a malignant glow on his dead-white scalp. "Your daughter, Director," he continued. "If you wish to see her again, you will give me a ship, your fastest ship." There was a moment of dead, utter silence. Then Director Barrow leaned over the desk and flicked the key of the communicator. "Control? Get my—get Leah Barrow at once. Ring her room. If no answer there, get my housekeeper. This is Director Barrow." "Your fastest ship," repeated the Venusian. "Well stocked with supplies. Enough to take me to—to a place in the Asteroid belt. I shall be too late now to carry out my original plans on Ganymede." The office door opened and Captain Wayne came in, followed by Roger Corey. Their eyes widened as they saw the Venusian. Wayne's hand darted toward his holster, then relaxed as he saw Mart's blaster trained on the pirate. He faced Director Barrow and saluted. "Captain," Barrow ordered, "you will form a search party at once—every available man and means. We must search all of Callisto within—" he made a rapid mental calculation "—about fifty miles. You will be searching for my daughter." The captain stiffened. Before he could reply the carrier wave hummed and a feminine voice, that of an elderly woman, came over the communicator. "Director Barrow? Leah isn't here. I looked in her room and her bed is disarranged as though she left suddenly. She always makes it herself as soon as she gets up." "Anything to point to when she left, Mrs. Andrews?" "Not exactly, sir. The alarm was set for six and it was still buzzing. Her bed isn't very mussed; it looks like she got up again almost right after she retired. I don't understand." Director Barrow's face was bleak. His voice sounded like the drip of water from melting ice. "Clothing?" he asked. "Her lightweight spacesuit is gone. Apparently she put it on over her sleeping pajamas, for they aren't here. Is there anything I can do, sir? I'm worried; she hasn't ever—" "That will be all, Mrs. Andrews," Barrow replied. "I'll let you know if there is anything." He turned to Captain Wayne. "Use this set, Captain. Get Communications to send out a general alarm and assembly. You can make all necessary arrangements right here." Wayne crossed to the communicator, and began to issue rapid instructions. "Tell them to hurry," the Venusian cut in mockingly. "They have until nine-thirty o'clock." Mart Wells glanced fearfully at the dial of the chronometer. It was eight-forty now. He turned and caught the Director's glance. " The timer! " he said grimly. "Captain Wayne said it was missing from the wrecked ship. He must have—" The Venusian was grinning. "Exactly. The timer. And a pound of uranite. That gives you fifty minutes to search Callisto. It would be wiser to spend the time getting a ship ready for me instead." The silence of the office was broken only by the low voice of Captain Wayne giving orders into the communicator. Abruptly he turned to his superior. His face was white. "Search is on, sir. But if he isn't lying, there's a chance in a million. Less than an hour, and the area to be covered is—" Barrow was looking straight ahead, and not a muscle of his face moved until he spoke. "I'm afraid he isn't bluffing. No reason why he should be. Leah is gone and the timer is gone. And a pirate ship would have uranite." "The ship?" asked Tar Norn. "It will take some time to fuel it and—" Director Barrow's voice was positive. "There will be no ship for you, Tar Norn." Roger Corey's voice cut in, jerkily. "Let me work on him, sir. Me and Wayne. Maybe we can make him talk." Barrow shook his head. "No use, Corey. Venusians don't mind pain as much as Earthmen. They almost like it. You could take him apart, and he wouldn't talk." The pirate's smile faded. "It will take half an hour to prepare the ship, Director Barrow. Better not stall too long." Mart said, his voice urgent. "But, sir, Leah ! What's one pirate compared to—" Barrow's face was granite-like. "He's killed hundreds of people. If we release him, he'll kill hundreds more. One life cannot weigh against that. Corey, take him away. Lock him up until the next ship leaves for Earth." Mart's fists were clenched, his fingernails biting into the palms. But he knew Barrow was right; that he couldn't possibly take any other course and be worthy of his post. One life couldn't weigh against the many lives that meeting the pirate's terms would mean. That was where Tar Norn had miscalculated. A Venusian didn't understand responsibility to society, nor any higher ideal than self-interest. Tar Norn tossed the wig and glasses to the floor as Corey took his arm. His pupil-less eyes seemed to glow with anger. "You won't murder your own daughter, Director. This is a bluff. But mine isn't. She dies at nine-thirty unless you find her. I swear that by the Eternal Varga ." Mart cursed. Fists balled, he lunged toward the Venusian. Barrow put a hand on his arm. "Don't, Wells. That's up to the Interplanetary Council." "But he's not bluffing," Mart raved. "Leah will surely die at nine-thirty. That damned oath. Varga. It's the only thing a Venusian is afraid of. He isn't—" His voice broke. Corey started off with the Venusian. Barrow said, "Yes, he's telling the truth. But we have some time yet. Maybe the search—" Mart strode to the window and looked out so the others wouldn't see his face. Less than three-quarters of an hour to search all of Callisto within a radius of fifty miles! Through the pane he saw figures in groups of three searching the streets and buildings of Comprotown. That part of the search wouldn't be difficult. But the hills and the caves, and with only two autogiros. If she was there, out of sight in one of the caves, where the cruising ships couldn't see her.... Her father was right, but—The picture of Leah Barrow, smiling as he had last seen her, seemed to blur out the view from the window. Her impertinent little tilted nose, the soft tempting contours of her lips, the deep blueness of her eyes. He whirled from the window and began pacing the floor, trying to think of something they could do that wasn't being done. Again at the communicator, Captain Wayne was barking questions. "All available men and women are combing the town, sir," he reported, "with orders to break down any doors that are locked, to stop at nothing." "And outside, Captain?" "The two giros are our only real hope. But the men from the smelting plant are working afoot out of town. By nine-thirty they'll have covered a radius of about five miles." Corey returned, slamming the door viciously behind him. "Maybe we could trick him, sir," he suggested. "Pretend we'll give him a ship if he'll—" "A Venusian wouldn't trust his own mother," Barrow snapped. "He'd insist on taking off first and then radioing back where she is. And don't think he wouldn't check the fuel tanks." "I wish you'd let me and Wayne work on him, anyway." Director Barrow didn't answer. Mart growled, "If Leah dies, I'm going to take that filthy pirate and—" Wayne's voice was bitter. "Venusians can't help what they are. Blame the Earth council that sold them those ships. If they had used more sense, there wouldn't be a Venusian off Venus." Mart nodded. If the council hadn't pulled that boner twenty years before, there would be no trouble with the Venusians. Venusians were, compared to Earth standards, a strange combination of genius and idiocy. Brilliant mathematicians, they had no mechanical ingenuity whatever. Linguists who could speak any language fluently after hearing it a few hours, not one of them could create a child's wind-up toy. Knowing the laws of leverage, they constructed their buildings by manual labor alone. Able to operate any machine as long as it was in good working order, they couldn't as much as figure out how to repair a clogged fuel-line. Even the pirates based on some of the bigger Asteroids had to depend upon a few renegade Earthmen to keep their ships in running order. And if one went blah away from base, it was a gone ship as far as they were concerned. Probably the trouble that had forced Tar Norn down on Callisto had been a minor matter that any Earthman could have taken in his stride. But to Tar Norn it meant a new ship or nothing. The thought of ships reminded him of the freighters. "Cap," he asked Wayne, "the freighters been searched thoroughly?" Wayne nodded. "Rocket tubes and all. Even broke open the ore drums. I presume you'll want them to clear on schedule?" Director Barrow nodded. "The crews?" he asked. "In the search or standing by?" "Standing by for departure as usual, Director. A few men one way or the other—" Barrow nodded, glancing at the chronometer. Mart knew what he was thinking. Less than half an hour now. And, unless the searchers by some miracle found Leah Barrow, it would all be over before the ten o'clock clearance of the first freighter. And the freighters hadn't missed a clearance in ten years. The carrier wave hummed again. "Central Communications reporting. Most searchers in the town have reported in. No results. Those outside reaching points three miles out." The communicator faded. Mart clenched his fists against the futility of that search. Three miles! The strong Venusian, in the light gravity of Callisto, probably had eight or ten hours of darkness to carry his burden. He could easily have covered twenty to forty miles, in any direction. Possibly even more. And the chance of an autogiro— Obviously, Wayne had been thinking the same thing. "He timed his arrival," he said bitterly. "He gave us less than an hour. He'd certainly have put her outside walking range within that length of time. And with all the caves around, thousands of them, would he have put her where a giro could spot anything?" Mart glanced at Barrow. The Director was sitting as immobile as a statue. His eyes were closed and every muscle of his thin face was tense. Probably he was trying not to look at the chronometer on the wall. It was nine-fifteen. The office door opened and three uniformed mechanics from the field stood in the doorway. The foremost of them saluted. "This entire building has been searched twice except this office. I presume—" Director Barrow opened his eyes and stood up. "Don't presume anything. Search here, too." The men came in and began a detailed but fruitless search. Nobody spoke until they left. The chronometer said twenty minutes after nine now. Ten minutes to go, if the timer had been accurately set. But could it have been set wrong? Venusians were lousy mechanics. Maybe— Mart became aware that he was holding his breath for the sound of a distant explosion. Yes, from whatever point Tar Norn could have hidden his hostage, the sound of a pound of uranite exploding would carry back to Comprotown. He sat down at his desk again. In front of him were the signed clearance papers for the freighters. In half an hour he'd take out the papers for the first freighter. But before that half hour was up— He twisted a pencil between his fingers, held himself rigid to keep from turning and looking at the chronometer again. It hadn't been over a minute since he sat down—why torture himself by looking again? But each minute now seemed both a flash and an eternity. He turned over the sheaf of papers and drew a little square on the blank reverse side of the bottom one. That was Comprotown. He made a dot an inch or two away. That was the point where Tar Norn's ship had wrecked itself in landing. He drew a line from the point to the square. That was Tar Norn coming in to the town. That would have been about ten hours ago. Then, from the information about Callisto and Comprotown that had been in the papers in Tar Norn's ship, the pirate had found the home of the director. He would have had no trouble finding Leah's room. Venusians could see in the dark and walk as silently as cats. He would undoubtedly have drugged Leah into unconsciousness, probably without awakening her, since there had been no sign of a struggle. He'd put her into the lightweight spacesuit. Why? Undoubtedly it indicated that she would be outdoors. During the Callisto day, it would have been unnecessary. But an unconscious Earthwoman would freeze to death in the cold dark period of Callisto's eclipse behind Big Jupe. What then? The Venusian left, carrying her— The Venusian had carried the drugged girl into the night. He threw down the pencil and began to pace the room again. His muscles were tense from listening. How many minutes? He didn't want to know; dared not look. But Tar Norn must have planned it all before he left the wrecked ship. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken the timer and— Would he have rigged the time-bomb first, or after he had kidnapped Leah? And how? The timer itself would not have provided the concussion to set off the uranite. He'd have needed a battery, a spark-coil, and— But Venusians weren't mechanics. They didn't understand machines, or electricity, or even simple clockworks, brilliant as their strange minds were in other ways. Tar Norn could have set the timer all right. For that matter, he could calculate an orbit and make settings for space flight. But he couldn't have made a time-bomb, even with the timer. He couldn't have rigged a circuit that would set off a cap! And, Mart realized suddenly, the timer itself would be an electrical—not a clockwork—gadget. Once disconnected from the now broken dynamo of the ship, Tar Norn couldn't have made it run at all! A momentary surge of elation swept Mart. Tar Norn must have been bluffing! Then he remembered: a Venusian might murder his own family, but he would never swear to an untruth by the Eternal Varga. That one superstition, or religion, as they looked upon it, was binding beyond all else. And Tar Norn had sworn by that oath that Leah Barrows would die at nine-thirty unless— Mart looked at the chronometer. It was twenty-six minutes past nine. He caught a glimpse of Director Barrow's face. It looked like the face of a dead man. Barrow had obviously given up all hope and waited only for the four minutes to pass. The carrier wave hummed. All of them started, but the voice from the communicator merely reported, "All Comprotown reports in. All negative. Giros report nothing. Foot parties five miles out. Reports negative." Three minutes to go. Mart could see by the attitude of the others that they were bracing themselves for the sound of an explosion. All of them had liked, or loved, Leah Barrows. Mart had a momentary vision of her again, and remembered the electric thrill that had run through him when she had placed her hand on his arm, just a few days ago, and told him that she did care for him, well, a little anyway— But, if Tar Norn couldn't have rigged a time-bomb, how could he have arranged for Leah to die at nine-thirty? He saw again the corpse-like face of the Director. Yes, they had all been wrong in thinking that nothing mattered to Barrow more than the schedules— Schedules ! There had been departure schedules among the papers in Tar Norn's ship. Could he have— With a sudden intake of breath that was almost a gasp, Mart whirled and ran to the communicator. The others looked at him, startled. Mart was yelling at the mike even before he got near enough to it to talk in a normal voice. "Control! Emergency! Get Jupe Freighter One ! Tell him not to test his tubes. Not to touch a lever!"

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THE PLAGUE By TEDDY KELLER Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States! Illustrated by Schoenherr Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip. Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection." All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin. "I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge." "But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg." Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out." "But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word. "Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through. "There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through." Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office. Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said. "Brass give you much trouble?" "Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?" "I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time." "Thanks. Sit down." She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes. "Any water reports?" Andy asked. "Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it." Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?" "It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary." "What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?" "In food?" "How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?" "On the wind?" "But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?" Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?" "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know." For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers. "We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington." Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory. He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends. It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers. "Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office. Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk. "RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled." Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely. "Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation." Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder. "Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that." A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—" "All right," Andy said sharply. For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said, "You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work." "Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual, "insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—" "Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—" "That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action." Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth. "But you can't—" "Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep." "But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—" "Corporal!" the colonel roared. And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?" The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—" "I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone." "But, general, I—" The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face. "Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?" Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess." The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared." Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him. "I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works." "A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it." "It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within." The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?" Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him. Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation." The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here." "But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—" The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work." The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in. She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked. Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said. "From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick." "I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital." "But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged. "Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?" Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out." "Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses." "That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?" "Nor a single postal worker." Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—" He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out. Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down." "What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico." "Writers?" "Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit." "This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that." Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley." "Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together." "What does it show?" "Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin. "If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?" "Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public." "Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit." "Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases." "And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head. Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk. Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily. "It's here somewhere, but we can't find it." "The answer?" "Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—" In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed. Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab." It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede. "It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water." The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis." "Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?" She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic." "Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet." Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed. "Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile. "What time is it?" Janis asked weakly. Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take. One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her. "I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...." Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in." "What did you do then?" Andy asked. "I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all." "And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?" "Nothing," Janis said too quickly. Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help." "But ... but...." "Was it something against regulations?" "I ... I don't know. I think...." "I'll vouch for your job in this office." "Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother." Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here." Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes. "Did you mail it?" "Y ... yes." "You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?" "Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob. "Did I do wrong?" "No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now." The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl. Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and.... "Hey, wait!" Andy yelled. Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast." The technician darted out. Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything." Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy. It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers. "Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?" Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't. "The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen." The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp. Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful." "The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—" "At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?" "Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—" He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard. "But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped." The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow. "But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick." Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge." The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?" Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand. "And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars." But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes. And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard. THE END

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SIGNAL RED By HENRY GUTH They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out. "Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said. Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad. He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes. The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down. There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die. As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs. The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed: " Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. " Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long. " Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. " The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed. Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk. He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously. A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there. Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked. " Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light. He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket. "Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back." Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind. The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man." The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— " With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off. Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them. "We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in. Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones. "Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are." Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does." The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff. "Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough." Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?" "Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door. Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm. "A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know." Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck. In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other. What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited. The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship. " All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. " Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out. Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked. The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside. Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously. Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship. He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped. He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return. A bell clanged. Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM. Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately. Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears. The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy. The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. " The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us." The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet. Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die. This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence. Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order. "Port guns alert." Then hush and tension. The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all. "Fire number seven." He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band. This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see. He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough. The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead. "Hold fire." He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said. "Stand by." Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands. This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down.... "It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty." Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust . Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered. He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man. He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously. A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face. "Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?" Shano blinked. Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?" Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said. "Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face. He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints. Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked. He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing. A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—" Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now? "Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!" Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background. "Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours." Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth. "Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!" Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe. The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!" Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship. The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand." "Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?" "No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel." The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die. Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out. Shano smoked and thought. They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed. He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship. Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head. "One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum." He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway. What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again. Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive. A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?" Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years. "Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...." Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that.... "Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?" He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man. Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.

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CAPTAIN MIDAS By ALFRED COPPEL, JR. The captain of the Martian Maid stared avidly at the torn derelict floating against the velvet void. Here was treasure beyond his wildest dreams! How could he know his dreams should have been nightmares? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Gold! A magic word, even today, isn't it? Lust and gold ... they go hand in hand. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. And, of course, there's another word needed to make up the trilogy. You don't get any thing for nothing. So add this: Cost. Or you might call it pain, sorrow, agony. Call it what you like. It's what you pay for great treasure.... These things were true when fabled Jason sailed the Argo beyond Colchis seeking the Fleece. They were true when men sailed the southern oceans in wooden ships. And the conquest of space hasn't changed us a bit. We're still a greedy lot.... I'm a queer one to be saying these things, but then, who has more right? Look at me. My hair is gray and my face ... my face is a mask. The flesh hangs on my bones like a yellow cloth on a rickety frame. I am old, old. And I wait here on my hospital cot—wait for the weight of years I never lived to drag me under and let me forget the awful things my eyes have seen. I'm poor, too, or else I wouldn't be here in this place of dying for old spacemen. I haven't a dime except for the pittance the Holcomb Foundation calls a spaceman's pension. Yet I had millions in my hands. Treasure beyond your wildest dreams! Cursed treasure.... You smile. You are thinking that I'm just an old man, beached earthside, spinning tall tales to impress the youngsters. Maybe, thinking about the kind of spacemen my generation produced, you have the idea that if ever we'd so much as laid a hand on anything of value out in space we'd not let go until Hell froze over! Well, you're right about that. We didn't seek the spaceways for the advancement of civilization or any of that Foundation bushwah, you can be certain of that. We did it for us ... for Number One. That's the kind of men we were, and we were proud of it. We hung onto what we found because the risks were high and we were entitled to keep what we could out there. But there are strange things in the sky. Things that don't respond to all of our neat little Laws and Theories. There are things that are no part of the world of men, thick with danger—and horror. If you doubt that—and I can see you do—just look at me. I suppose you've never heard of the Martian Maid, and so you don't know the story of what happened to her crew or her skipper. I can give you this much of an answer. I was her skipper. And her crew? They ride high in the sky ... dust by this time. And all because they were men, and men are greedy and hasty and full of an unreasoning, unthinking love for gold. They ride a golden ship that they paid for with all the years of their lives. It's all theirs now. Bought and paid for. It wasn't too long ago that I lifted the Maid off Solis Lacus on that last flight. Not many of you will remember her class of ship, so many advances have been made in the last few years. The Maid was two hundred feet from tip to tail, and as sleek a spacer as ever came out of the Foundation Yards. Chemical fueled, she was nothing at all like the spherical hyperdrives we see today. She was armed, too. The Foundation still thought of space as a possible stamping ground for alien creatures though no evidence of any extra-terrestrial life had ever been found ... then. My crew was a rough bunch, like all those early crews. I remember them so well. Lean, hungry men with hell in their eyes and a great lust for high pay and hard living. Spinelli, Shelley, Cohn, Marvin, Zaleski. There wasn't a man on board who wouldn't have traded his immortal soul for a few solar dollars, and I don't claim that I was any different. That's the kind of men that opened up the spaceways, too. Don't believe all this talk about the noble pioneering spirit of man. That's tripe. There never has been such a thing as a noble pioneer. Not in space or anywhere else. It is the malcontent and the adventuring mercenary that pushes the frontier outward. I didn't know, that night as I stood in the valve of the Maid, watching the loading cranes pull away, that I was starting out on my last flight. I don't think any of the others could have guessed, either. It was the sort of night that you only see on Mars. The sort of night that makes a spaceman wonder why in hell he wants to leave the relative security of the Earth-Mars-Venus Triangle to go jetting across the belt into deep space and the drab desolation of the outer System. I stood there, watching the lights of Canalopolis in the distance. For just a moment I was ... well, touched. It looked beautiful and unreal under the racing moons. The lights of the gin mills and houses made a sparkling filigree pattern on the dark waters of the ancient canal, and the moons cast their shifting shadows across the silted banks. I was too far away to see the space-fevered bums and smell the shanties, and for a little while I felt the wonder of standing on the soil of a world that man had made his own with his rapacity and his sheer guts and gimme. I thought of our half empty cargo hold and the sweet payload we would pick up on Callisto. And I counted the extra cash my packets of snow would bring from those lonely men up there on the barren moonlets of the outer Systems. There were plenty of cargoes carried on the Maid that the Holcomb Foundation snoopers never heard about, you can be sure of that. In those days the asteroid belt was the primary danger and menace to astrogation. For a long while it held men back from deep space, but as fuels improved a few ships were sent out over the top. A few million miles up out of the ecliptic plane brings you to a region of space that's pretty thinly strewn with asteroids, and that's the way we used to make the flight between the outer systems and the EMV Triangle. It took a long while for hyperdrives to be developed and of course atomics never panned out because of the weight problem. So that's the orbit the Maid took on that last trip of mine. High and clear into the supra-solar void. And out there in that primeval blackness is where we found the derelict. I didn't realize it was a derelict when Spinelli first reported it from the forward scope position. I assumed it was a Foundation ship. The Holcomb Foundation was founded for the purpose of developing spaceflight, and as the years went by it took on the whole responsibility for the building and dispatching of space ships. Never in history had there been any real evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, and when the EMV Triangle proved barren, we all just assumed that the Universe was man's own particular oyster. That kind of unreasoning arrogance is as hard to explain as it is to correct. There were plenty of ships being lost in space, and immediately that Spinelli's report from up forward got noised about the Maid every one of us started mentally counting up his share of the salvage money. All this before we were within ten thousand miles of the hulk! All spaceships look pretty much alike, but as I sat at the telescope I saw that there was something different about this one. At such a distance I couldn't get too much detail in our small three inch glass, but I could see that the hulk was big—bigger than any ship I'd ever seen before. I had the radar fixed on her and then I retired with my slide rule to Control. It wasn't long before I discovered that the derelict ship was on a near collision course, but there was something about its orbit that was strange. I called Cohn, the Metering Officer, and showed him my figures. "Mister Cohn," I said, chart in hand, "do these figures look right to you?" Cohn's dark eyes lit up as they always did when he worked with figures. It didn't take him long to check me. "The math is quite correct, Captain," he said. I could see that he hadn't missed the inference of those figures on the chart. "Assemble the ship's company, Mister Cohn," I ordered. The assembly horn sounded throughout the Maid and I could feel the tug of the automatics taking over as the crew left their stations. Soon they were assembled in Control. "You have all heard about Mister Spinelli's find," I said, "I have computed the orbit and inspected the object through the glass. It seems to be a spacer ... either abandoned or in distress...." Reaching into the book rack above my desk I took down a copy of the Foundation's Space Regulations and opened it to the section concerning salvage. "Sections XVIII, Paragraph 8 of the Code Regulating Interplanetary Astrogation and Commerce," I read, "Any vessel or part of vessel found in an abandoned or totally disabled condition in any region of space not subject to the sovereignty of any planet of the Earth-Venus-Mars Triangle shall be considered to be the property of the crew of the vessel locating said abandoned or disabled vessel except in such cases as the ownership of said abandoned or disabled vessel may be readily ascertained...." I looked up and closed the book. "Simply stated, that means that if that thing ahead of us is a derelict we are entitled to claim it as salvage." "Unless it already belongs to someone?" asked Spinelli. "That's correct Mister Spinelli, but I don't think there is much danger of that," I replied quietly. "My figures show that hulk out there came in from the direction of Coma Berenices...." There was a long silence before Zaleski shifted his two hundred pounds uneasily and gave a form to the muted fear inside me. "You think ... you think it came from the stars , Captain?" "Maybe even from beyond the stars," Cohn said in a low voice. Looking at that circle of faces I saw the beginnings of greed. The first impact of the Metering Officer's words wore off quickly and soon every man of my crew was thinking that anything from the stars would be worth money ... lots of money. Spinelli said, "Do we look her over, Captain?" They all looked at me, waiting for my answer. I knew it would be worth plenty, and money hunger was like a fever inside me. "Certainly we look it over, Mister Spinelli," I said sharply. "Certainly!" The first thing about the derelict that struck us as we drew near was her size. No ship ever built in the Foundation Yards had ever attained such gargantuan proportions. She must have stretched a full thousand feet from bow to stern, a sleek torpedo shape of somehow unspeakable alienness. Against the backdrop of the Milky Way, she gleamed fitfully in the light of the faraway sun, the metal of her flanks grained with something like tiny, glittering whorls. It was as though the stuff were somehow unstable ... seeking balance ... maybe even alive in some strange and alien way. It was readily apparent to all of us that she had never been built for inter-planetary flight. She was a starship. Origin unknown. An aura of mystery surrounded her like a shroud, protecting the world that gave her birth mutely but effectively. The distance she must have come was unthinkable. And the time it had taken...? Aeons. Millennia. For she was drifting, dead in space, slowly spinning end over end as she swung about Sol in a hyperbolic orbit that would soon take her out and away again into the inter-stellar deeps. Something had wounded her ... perhaps ten million years ago ... perhaps yesterday. She was gashed deeply from stem to stern with a jagged rip that bared her mangled innards. A wandering asteroid? A meteor? We would never know. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling of things beyond the ken of men as I looked at her through the port. I would never know what killed her, or where she was going, or whence she came. Yet she was mine. It made me feel like an upstart. And it made me afraid ... but of what? We should have reported her to the nearest EMV base, but that would have meant that we'd lose her. Scientists would be sent out. Men better equipped than we to investigate the first extrasolar artifact found by men. But I didn't report her. She was ours. She was money in the bank. Let the scientists take over after we'd put a prize crew aboard and brought her into Callisto for salvage.... That's the way I had things figured. The Maid hove to about a hundred yards from her and hung there, dwarfed by the mighty glistening ship. I called for volunteers and we prepared a boarding party. I was thinking that her drives alone would be worth millions. Cohn took charge and he and three of the men suited up and crossed to her. In an hour they were back, disappointment largely written on their faces. "There's nothing left of her, Captain," Cohn reported, "Whatever hit her tore up the innards so badly we couldn't even find the drives. She's a mess inside. Nothing left but the hull and a few storage compartments that are still unbroken." She was never built to carry humanoids he told us, and there was nothing that could give us a hint of where she had come from. The hull alone was left. He dropped two chunks of metal on my desk. "I brought back some samples of her pressure hull," he said, "The whole thing is made of this stuff...." "We'll still take her in," I said, hiding my disappointment. "The carcass will be worth money in Callisto. Have Mister Marvin and Zaleski assemble a spare pulse-jet. We'll jury-rig her and bring her down under her own power. You take charge of provisioning her. Check those compartments you found and install oxy-generators aboard. When it's done report to me in my quarters." I picked up the two samples of gleaming metal and called for a metallurgical testing kit. "I'm going to try and find out if this stuff is worth anything...." The metal was heavy—too heavy, it seemed to me, for spaceship construction. But then, who was to say what conditions existed on that distant world where this metal was made? Under the bright fluorescent over my work-table, the chunks of metal torn from a random bulkhead of the starship gleamed like pale silver; those strange little whorls that I had noticed on the outer hull were there too, like tiny magnetic lines of force, making the surface of the metal seem to dance. I held the stuff in my bare hand. It had a yellowish tinge, and it was heavier .... Even as I watched, the metal grew yellower, and the hand that held it grew bone weary, little tongues of fatigue licking up my forearm. Suddenly terrified, I dropped the chunk as though it were white hot. It struck the table with a dull thud and lay there, a rich yellow lump of metallic lustre. For a long while I just sat and stared. Then I began testing, trying all the while to quiet the trembling of my hands. I weighed it on a balance. I tested it with acids. It had changed unquestionably. It was no longer the same as when I had carried it into my quarters. The whorls of force were gone. It was no longer alive with a questing vibrancy ... it was inert, stable. From somewhere, somehow, it had drawn the energy necessary for transmutation. The unknown metal—the stuff of which that whole mammoth spaceship from the stars was built—was now.... Gold! I scarcely dared believe it, but there it was staring at me from my table-top. Gold! I searched my mind for an explanation. Contra-terrene matter, perhaps, from some distant island universe where matter reacted differently ... drawing energy from somewhere, the energy it needed to find stability in its new environment. Stability as a terrene element—wonderfully, miraculously gold! And outside, in the void beyond the Maid's ports there were tons of this metal that could be turned into treasure. My laughter must have been a wild sound in those moments of discovery.... A slight sound behind me made me spin around in my chair. Framed in the doorway was the heavy figure of my Third Officer, Spinelli. His black eyes were fastened hungrily on the lump of yellow metal on the table. He needed no explanation to tell him what it was, and it seemed to me that his very soul reached out for the stuff, so sharp and clear was the meaning of the expression on his heavy face. "Mister Spinelli!" I snapped, "In the future knock before entering my quarters!" Reluctantly his eyes left the lump of gold and met mine. "From the derelict, Captain?" There was an imperceptible pause between the last two words. I ignored his question and made a mental note to keep a close hand on the rein with him. Spinelli was big and dangerous. "Speak your piece, Mister," I ordered sharply. "Mister Cohn reports the derelict ready to take aboard the prize crew ... sir," he said slowly. "I'd like to volunteer for that detail." I might have let him go under ordinary circumstances, for he was a first class spaceman and the handling of a jury-rigged hulk would need good men. But the gold-hunger I had seen in his eyes warned me to beware. I shook my head. "You will stay on board the Maid with me, Spinelli. Cohn and Zaleski will handle the starship." Stark suspicion leaped into his eyes. I could see the wheels turning slowly in his mind. Somehow, he was thinking, I was planning to cheat him of his rightful share of the derelict treasure ship. "We will say nothing to the rest of the crew about the gold, Mister Spinelli," I said deliberately, "Or you'll go to Callisto in irons. Is that clear?" "Aye, sir," murmured Spinelli. The black expression had left his face and there was a faintly scornful smile playing about his mouth as he turned away. I began wondering then what he had in mind. It wasn't like him to let it go at that. Suddenly I became conscious of being very tired. My mind wasn't functioning quite clearly. And my arm and hand ached painfully. I rubbed the fingers to get some life back into them, still wondering about Spinelli. Spinelli talked. I saw him murmuring something to big Zaleski, and after that there was tension in the air. Distrust. For a few moments I pondered the advisability of making good my threat to clap Spinelli into irons, but I decided against it. In the first place I couldn't prove he had told Zaleski about the gold and in the second place I needed Spinelli to help run the Maid. I felt that the Third Officer and Zaleski were planning something, and I was just as sure that Spinelli was watching Zaleski to see to it that there was no double-cross. I figured that I could handle the Third Officer alone so I assigned the rest, Marvin and Chelly, to accompany Cohn and Zaleski onto the hulk. That way Zaleski would be outnumbered if he tried to skip with the treasure ship. But, of course, I couldn't risk telling them that they were to be handling a vessel practically made of gold. I was in agony. I didn't want to let anyone get out of my sight with that starship, and at the same time I couldn't leave the Maid. Finally I had to let Cohn take command of the prize crew, but not before I had set the radar finder on the Maid's prow squarely on the derelict. Together, Spinelli and I watched the Maid's crew vanish into the maw of the alien ship and get her under way. There was a flicker of bluish fire from her jury-rigged tubes astern, and then she was vanishing in a great arc toward the bright gleam of Jupiter, far below us. The Maid followed under a steady one G of acceleration with most of her controls on automatic. Boats of the Martian Maid's class, you may remember, carried a six inch supersonic projector abaft the astrogation turret. These were nasty weapons for use against organic life only. They would reduce a man to jelly at fifty thousand yards. Let it be said to my credit that it wasn't I who thought of hooking the gun into the radar finder and keeping it aimed dead at the derelict. That was Spinelli's insurance against Zaleski. When I discovered it I felt the rage mount in me. He was willing to blast every one of his shipmates into pulp should the hulk vary from the orbit we'd laid out for her. He wasn't letting anything come between him and that mountain of gold. Then I began thinking about it. Suppose now, just suppose, that Zaleski told the rest of the crew about the gold. It wouldn't be too hard for the derelict to break away from the Maid, and there were plenty of places in the EMV Triangle where a renegade crew with a thousand tons of gold would be welcomed with open arms and no questions asked. Suspicion began to eat at me. Could Zaleski and Cohn have dreamed up a little switch to keep the treasure ship for themselves? It hadn't seemed likely before, but now— The gun-pointer remained as it was. As the days passed and we reached turn-over with the hulk still well within visual range, I noticed a definite decrease in the number of messages from Cohn. The Aldis Lamps no longer blinked back at the Maid eight or ten times a day, and I began to really regret not having taken the time to equip the starship with UHF radio communicators. Each night I slept with a hunk of yellow gold under my bunk, and ridiculously I fondled the stuff and dreamed of all the things I would have when the starship was cut up and sold. My weariness grew. It became almost chronic, and I soon wondered if I hadn't picked up a touch of space-radiation fever. The flesh of my hands seemed paler than it had been. My arms felt heavy. I determined to report myself to the Foundation medics on Callisto. There's no telling what can happen to a man in space.... Two days past turn-over the messages from the derelict came through garbled. Spinelli cursed and said that he couldn't read their signal. Taking the Aldis from him I tried to raise them and failed. Two hours later I was still failing and Spinelli's black eyes glittered with an animal suspicion. "They're faking!" "Like hell they are!" I snapped irritably, "Something's gone wrong...." "Zaleski's gone wrong, that's what!" I turned to face him, fury snapping inside of me. "Then you did disobey my orders. You told him about the gold!" "Sure I did," he sneered. "Did you expect me to shut up and let you land the ship yourself and claim Captain's share? I found her, and she's mine!" I fought to control my temper and said: "Let's see what's going on in her before deciding who gets what, Mister Spinelli." Spinelli bit his thick lips and did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the image of the starship on the viewplate. A light blinked erratically within the dark cut of its wounded side. "Get this down, Spinelli!" The habit of taking orders was still in him, and he muttered: "Aye ... sir." The light was winking out a message, but feebly, as though the hand that held the lamp were shaking and the mind conceiving the words were failing. "CONTROL ... LOST ... CAN'T ... NO ... STRENGTH ... LEFT ... SHIP ... WALLS ... ALL ... ALL GOLD ... GOLD ... SOMETHING ... HAPPENING ... CAN'T ... UNDERSTAND ... WHA...." The light stopped flashing, abruptly, in mid-word. "What the hell?" demanded Spinelli thickly. "Order them to heave to, Mister," I ordered. He clicked the Aldis at them. The only response was a wild swerve in the star-ship's course. She left the orbit we had set for her as though the hands that guided her had fallen away from the control. Spinelli dropped the Aldis and rushed to the control panel to make the corrections in the Maid's course that were needed to keep the hulk in sight. "Those skunks! Double crossing rats!" he breathed furiously. "They won't shake loose that easy!" His hands started down for the firing console of the supersonic rifle. I caught the movement from the corner of my eye. " Spinelli! " My shout hung in the still air of the control room as I knocked him away from the panel. "Get to your quarters!" I cracked. He didn't say a thing, but his big shoulders hunched angrily and he moved across the deck toward me, his hands opening and closing spasmodically. His eyes were wild with rage and avarice. "You'll hang for mutiny, Spinelli!" I said. He spat out a foul name and leaped for me. I side-stepped his charge and brought my joined fists down hard on the back of his neck. He stumbled against the bulkhead and his eyes were glazed. He charged again, roaring. I stepped aside and smashed him in the mouth with my right fist, then crossing with an open-handed left to the throat. He staggered, spun and came for me again. I sank a hard left into his stomach and nailed him on the point of the jaw with a right from my shoe-tops. He straightened up and sprawled heavily to the deck, still trying to get at me. I aimed a hard kick at his temple and let it go. My metal shod boot caught him squarely and he rolled over on his face and lay still.

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62260

TROUBLE ON TYCHO By NELSON S. BOND Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc. "Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly. The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared. "Report ready, Jones?" "Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—" "Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all." "That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?" It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet. This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing. " Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds. The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking. "O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!" "I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice. Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously. "Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—" The Dome Commander's niece giggled. "That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice." "It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go." "That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar." "Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work. South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible. If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base. "Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units. Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence. "A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?" It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said, "Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?" "Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you." "O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else." Isobar bridled. "I don't know what you're talkin' about." "Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you." Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—" "Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here." "Yeah? What?" "Well, it's Roberts and Brown—" "What about 'em?" "They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs." "Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully. "Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes." "Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome. He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation. "Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?" Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—" "I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!" He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity: "Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?" "I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!" The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure. "Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?" "Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'" "Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!" Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then: "That is all," he concluded. "O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder. "Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!" "Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled. "How's that? I didn't say a word—" "Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?" "What? Why—why, yes, but—" "Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?" "Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people.... "Enough?" asked Sparks. Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!" "Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out. "Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar. "Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?" "Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily. "Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth." "It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees." Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin. "We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw." "I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—" "To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?" Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed. "N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—" "I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—" "Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly. "Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?" "Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir." "That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?" Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—" "I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?" "With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe." Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?" Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—" "It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!" "But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—" "But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure." He suddenly seemed to gain stature. "No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement." "But—" said Isobar. "No!" Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom— "Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—" "Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?" Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe. Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser. All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet: "They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—" "No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!" He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning. "Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—" But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity. "Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !" II "And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was." Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly. "It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar." "Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—" "Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle, "it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means 'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold. "It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...." "You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?" "Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?" "Below, I guess. In his quarters." "Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness." But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the "giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment. Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit. Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection. "So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!" And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside. On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman. Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety. "Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting." Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly. "Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?" Isobar's eyebrows arched. "You mean you haven't been notified?" "Notified of what ?" "Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?" "I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?" And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you." "We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like." "I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry." Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him. A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months! Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley.... How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed. It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol. He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret. And the shooting? That could only be— He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat. And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies! III Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man. "Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!" "W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?" "The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?" "Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!" He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that. Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call." "That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough. "But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!" For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony. Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings! Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm. "Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—" Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly. "You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—" But Roberts shook his head. "We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it." Isobar's last hope flickered out. "Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—" Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel. "Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!" Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?" "Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! " "Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle. Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies. "No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—" But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! " Roberts moaned. "Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!" And Brown stared at him hopelessly. "It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—" Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain. "It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building! "If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—" " Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! " "And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!" Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below. He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree. " Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones. IV And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt! As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning! So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis. "Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!" And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!" Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree. There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude. Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation. The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and— And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped, "Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!" And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio. He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below. "Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!" Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint: "After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"

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MORLEY'S WEAPON By D. W. BAREFOOT Out of the far reaches of the universe sped the meteor swarm, cosmic question marks destined for annihilation in the sun. But one, approximately half a pound of frozen destruction, had a rendezvous near Japetus with Spaceboat 6. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It was comfortably cool in the functional, little control room, but Morley was sweating, gently and steadily. His palms were wet, and the thin thoughtful face, shining in the glow of the instrument panel light, was wrinkled in an agony of concentration and doubt. He was trying to choose between the Scylla of waking Madsen with a corollary of biting contempt involved, and the Charybdis of attempting to land single handed on Japetus, less than five hundred miles below. Neither course was appealing. For the hundredth time he pondered miserably over the sad condition of what had been a reasonably well ordered existence. The worst of it was that he had only himself to blame, and he knew it. No one had forced him to leave a comfortable, if poorly paid position with General Plastics, and fill out an employment card at Satellites, Inc. He could not explain the obscure compulsion that sparked his little personal rebellion. He didn't know, or need to know that other generations of Morleys had fought in revolutions, or sailed in square riggers, or clawed gold from mountainsides. When he went to the spaceline, the puzzlement of his few friends was profound, but hardly more so than his own. And now, after almost a year of upheaval and change, he was piloting a spaceboat along an involute curve ending on the surface of Saturn's eighth moon. And he was still puzzled. Satellites, Inc., had done as well as possible with the raw material known as Morley, Vincent, No. 4628. His psychograph indicated a born subordinate, with a normal I.Q., reasonably stable and trustworthy though below average in initiative. They didn't inform him of this, or the fact that they had analyzed the neurosis which had driven him to the spaceline, and which had created by that very action the therapeutic aid he needed. Many spacemen had similar case histories. It was those who fought the compulsion who sometimes turned down dark pathways of the mind. For six months he attended cadet school, and graduated in due time, fourteenth in a class of fifty. The next day he was assigned as fourth engineman to the space freighter Solarian , bound to Port Ulysses, Titan, Saturn system, with a cargo of mining machinery and supplies. They blasted off from Chicago Spaceport on a raw March midnight. Just another rocket take-off, routine stuff, now. But have you ever seen it? The night, the wind, the distant city glow in the sky? On the strip squats the massive bulk of the rocket, loading hatches closed, sealed port holes gleaming through the gusts of rain that sweep the field. In the sound proofed spaceport control tower the officials are relaxed over coffee and cigarettes; their part is over; they sit watching. Somewhere in the mighty shell on the field, chronometer hands reach the calculated second, a circuit closes, relays chatter briefly. The rocket igniters are firing, flame billows over the field, a low rumble from the tubes builds to a throbbing roar. Twenty miles away a housewife looks up, a question on her face. Her husband listens and smiles. "It's the Saturn rocket. It's here in the paper, under Departures." On the field the roar rises to an insane bellow of sound. Under the mighty jets, the ten feet of concrete and the solid earth beneath it are shaking. In the insulated control tower a water glass dances in its holder. The watchers are not relaxed now; they lean forward. It's old stuff, routine, precalculated to a fraction of a second, but—watch. There—a stir—movement. Slowly at first, with a deliberate and awful majesty, then faster and faster. Straight toward the zenith the ship rises, trailing fire. Faster yet, hurling herself upward, under full power, through the last threads of atmosphere. Upward and onward, out past Roches limit, out where gravity dwindles toward zero, into the empyrean where the shades of dead spacemen cruise the cosmos in their phantom craft, spaceborne in the night. After he had recovered from the pangs of his initial attack of space nausea, Morley enjoyed himself. He had one minor social asset, a retentive mind, well stocked with general information. If the two apprentices got involved in an argument over the identity of the highest peak in America, Morley was the inevitable arbiter. He could with equal facility name the author of a recent best seller, or inform you that a young seal was a cub, a young hare, a leveret, and a young swan, a cygnet. He was fairly popular with the crew, except for a big Norwegian from New York, named Olaf Madsen. Madsen was a chunky, hard bitten veteran of the spaceways. Round faced, deceptively soft spoken, he had a penchant for practical jokes, and a flair for biting sarcasm which found full expression in the presence of any first tripper. He made the life of any apprentice miserable, and finished the last two weeks of one trip in the brig for panicking an entire crew by painting his face to resemble the onset of Martian blue fever. Morley considered him an oaf, and he considered Morley a human filing cabinet with a weak stomach. A little notice on the bulletin board was Morley's first inkling that his safe, secure routine was on the verge of mutating into something frighteningly unpredictable. "All personnel not on duty will report to the recreation room at 1900 hours, Solar time, to draw for side trip partners and destinations," it read. He buttonholed the crew messman. "What's all this about side trips, Oscar?" Roly poly Oscar looked at him incredulously. "The lay over trips. The time killer. On the level, don't you know?" Morley shook his head. "Well," Oscar told him, "We leave Earth shortly before Saturn is in opposition. They figure on the shortest possible run, which takes three months. If we discharge and start right back, the round trip would take about six months. That's fine, except that the synodic period for Earth and Saturn—Hey, you know what I'm talking about?" Morley admitted his ignorance, vaguely annoyed at the fact that for once he was the humble seeker for information, and someone else was being professorial. Oscar grinned. "And you studied astrogation! Well, when Saturn and Earth line up with the Sun, it takes three hundred and seventy eight days before they get in the same position again. So if we got back to Earth's orbit in six months, we'd still have about a hundred and eighty millions of miles to go, because Earth would be on Sol's other side at that time, in superior conjunction to Uranus." Morley digested this, while Oscar basked in the light of his own knowledge, enjoying himself hugely. "And the trips, Oscar?" "We lay over three or four months, 'til opposition time isn't too far away, and we pick partners and destinations by lot, and go out to Saturn's other moons on prospecting trips—ore deposits, jewels, botanical specimens, etc.—half for us, and half for the Company. It's a good deal, a regular vacation, and those two-men craft are sweet stuff. And if you're lucky—" He went on, but Morley heard no more. The prospect unnerved him. He was terrified at the idea of changing a safe subordinate position for that of an active partner, however temporary the arrangement might be. At the drawing, his hunch of impending misery proved all too real. He wound up facing the prospect of a stay on the frozen hell of Phoebe, scouring the miniature mountains for Japori crystals, with Madsen, MADSEN! for his only companion. A week later the Solarian teetered down to a landing at Port Ulysses. With various expressions of profane and unbounded delight from her crew, she was turned over to the stevedores and the maintenance gang. Thereafter, at intervals, the thirty foot space boats took off for Mimas, Tethys, Dione, or whatever waystop the lottery had decreed. Madsen and Morley left on the fourth 'night,' with Phoebe hardly a week's run from them at ten miles a second. Madsen was at the controls. Without a single spoken word on the subject, he was automatically the captain, and Morley, the crew. The situation crystallized twenty-four hours out of Port Ulysses. Morley was poring over the Ephemeris prior to taking his watch at the controls when he became aware that Madsen, red faced and breathing heavily, was peering over his shoulder. Morley stiffened in alarm. "Is anything—" He quailed under Madsen's glare. "Not yet, but there's liable to be if you don't smarten up." The Norwegian's blunt forefinger stabbed at the page Morley had been studying. "Phoebe, Mister, happens to be Saturn's NINTH moon. Get it? You can count, can't you?" Morley flushed, and fumbled miserably for a reasonable excuse. There was a gleam of contempt in Madsen's eyes, but he spoke again more quietly. "I'm going to eat and catch up on some sack time. We'll be right on top of Japetus in short order. It's a known fact that the moon won't move over if you fly at it, so you better wake me up to handle the compensating!" He disappeared into the tiny galley, but his words were still audible. "It's an awful long walk back, chum, if anybody pulls a bull." Morley swung himself into the pilot's seat, too numb with humiliation to answer. Almost an hour passed before he started the regulation checkup required by the Space Code of any ship passing within one hundred thousand miles of a planet or major satellite. Every guardian needle stood in its normal place with one exception. The craft had been running on the port fuel tanks, depleting them to the point where it seemed wise to trim ship. Morley opened the valve, touched the fuel pump switch and waited, nothing happened. He watched the needles incredulously. The pump—? He jabbed the switch, once, twice. Nothing. He leaned forward and rapped the starboard gauge with his knuckles, sharply. The needle swung from Full to Empty. Morley felt faint as realization hit him. The starboard gauge had stuck at Full, and had been unreported. The tank had not been serviced in port, owing to the faulty reading and a mechanic's carelessness. They had about two hours fuel. Even to Morley, it was obvious that there was one thing only to do—land on Japetus, looming up larger in the view-plate with each passing moment. He checked the distance rapidly, punched the calculator, and put the ship in the designated orbit. He wanted to handle the landing himself, but the thought of the final few ticklish moments chilled him. So did the thought of waking Madsen, and asking him to take over. And it was then, at the intersection of two courses formed by an infinity of variables, that two objects arrived in the same millisecond of time. Eight ounces of nickel iron smashed into the stern of Spaceboat 6, ripped a path of ruin through her entire length, and went out through the two inch glass of her bow, before Morley could turn his head. He was aware, in a strange dream-like way, of actuating the midships airtight door, of the hiss of air as the little aneroid automatically opened valves to compensate for the drop in pressure, and of Madsen leaping into the control room and slapping a Johnson patch over the hole in the bow. Madsen was white but composed. "We can slow her down but we can't land her. Get suits while I take over. We'll ride as far as we can, and walk the rest of the way." He fought with the controls, as Morley, still bemused, obeyed. At twenty-five hundred feet they bailed out, and floating down seconds later, watched Spaceboat 6 crash into a low wooded hill. And when they landed, and inspected the wreckage, it was some minutes before either spoke. It was obvious at a glance that Spaceboat 6 was ready for the boneyard, had there been one around. The ship, under the few automatic controls that were still functioning, had sliced in at a thirty degree angle, ploughed a short distance through a growth of slim, poplar-like trees, and then crumpled completely against an outcropping granite ledge. Finally Morley gulped audibly, and Madsen laughed. "Well, Mastermind, any suggestions that might help us? Any little pearls of wisdom from the great brain?" "Just one," Morley answered. "Head for the Equator, and—" "And try to find a D.D. Correct. If we last that long. Let's salvage what we can out of this junk and shove off." Morley cleared his throat diffidently. "There are a few pieces of equipment we should take along, for—er—emergencies—" His voice trailed off miserably under Madsen's basilisk stare. "Listen, Morley, once and for all. We're lugging essentials and that's all. Any extra weight is out." "But, listen—" Madsen ignored the interruption, and cut loose with one last broadside. "Save your breath. It's bad enough being saddled with a useless little squirt like you, without being made into a pack mule unnecessarily." II He climbed into a gaping hole in the bow. Morley followed, humiliated but still thinking hard. Catalogue it, he told himself. Remember everything. The Distress Depots, or D.D.'s, as spacemen called them, were studded on every frontier world, usually on the Equator. They contained two small spacecraft plus ample supplies of food, medicine, and tools. When wrecked, get to a D.D. and live. It was that simple. They spent an hour worming their way through the shambles that had been the well ordered interior of Spaceboat 6, before emerging to take stock of their loot on the ground outside. Both men knew that they were pitifully equipped to cover several hundred miles, on foot, in a completely hostile environment. Suddenly Madsen looked up from the sextant he was examining. "How come this gravity, Brain? I weigh about a hundred right now, I figure, and that's too much, by plenty. Japetus isn't a quarter the size of our moon." "It's supposed to have a core of heavy radioactive metals," said Morley, thoughtfully, "and a corresponding high density. Keeps it warm anyway, instead of a big icicle, like Phoebe." "Phoebe!" Madsen laughed. "I remember, back in '89—" He stopped abruptly at a rattling from the ledge. A green, little lizard-like creature was scrambling frantically over the granite, while hot in pursuit were three—spiders? Black, they were, a black like living velvet, and incredibly fast as they closed in, beady stalked eyes fastened on their prey. They were deliberately herding the desperate lizard toward a cleft in the rock. As the creature leaped into the opening, another spider dove at it from the recess. The others closed in. There was a hopeless hissing, a vicious clicking of mandibles. The struggle subsided. Once again the day was silent. Madsen holstered the blaster he had drawn and looked whitely at Morley. "Pleasant pets," he grunted. "Poisonous and carnivorous, too," said Morley, shakingly. "I remember reading that Valdez dissected one when he first landed here twenty years ago. One of his crew was bitten, and died in less than five minutes." Madsen was thoughtful. "We could stand a little briefing on the local flora and fauna, but palaver won't get us to the Equator. And that little stock treatise entitled 'Physical Attributes of Phoebe' is worse than useless. Lucky the sextant is O.K., we can at least check our latitude. There's just one flaw." "What's that?" "Which way do we go when we hit the line? The D.D.'s are spaced ninety degrees apart. We might be within a hundred miles of one. If we head the wrong way, we'd have three or four hundred miles to go. There's no method of figuring our longitude." Morley was staring sunward, with thoughtful eyes. "Yes, there is," he said quietly. Madsen's jaw dropped. "Give," he said. "We both forgot something we know perfectly well. Notice the sun? It hasn't moved perceptibly since we landed. Japetus doesn't revolve on its axis." "So what?" "Two things. One, no night, since we're on the sunward side. The sun will move from side to side in the sky, reaching its lateral limits when Japetus is in quadrature in regard to Saturn. If we were here for a month, we'd see Saturn rise, make a full arc through the sky, and set. Let's hope for a shorter stay." "Go on," said Madsen, and suddenly there was nothing patronizing or scornful in his voice. "Two. We came in over the Pole almost exactly at inferior conjunction. Right?" "I think I get it." Madsen answered slowly. For a moment Morley was silent. He could almost smell the dingy classroom in Port Chicago, almost see the words on the examination paper in front of him. The paragraph leaped out, limned sharply in his mind. "Section 4, Subhead A, Solar Space Code. The initial Distress Depot on any satellite shall be situated, when practical, on the Prime Meridian. For the purposes of this act, the Prime Meridian of a satellite shall be the meridian that bisects the Sun when the Satellite is in inferior conjunction. Quarter mile belts shall be burned fifty miles to the North, South, East, and West as guides. Radio beacons will operate, unless impracticable due to atmospheric conditions, or other reasons." "We're on, or practically on the Prime Meridian right now," said Madsen. "A trek due South should hit D.D. No. 1 square on the nose. Right?" "Right. Two or three hundred miles to go. We might make it in two weeks." Madsen squinted at the stationary disk of Sol, hanging in the sky. "Let's load up and get started. The sooner we're on our way, the better." Both men had discarded their space suits, were dressed in the gray work clothes of Satellites, Inc. Equipment was easily divided. Each had a blaster, and a wrist compass-chronometer. Radio was useless on Japetus, and the little headsets were ruthlessly jettisoned. The flat tins of emergency food concentrate were stowed in two knapsacks. Madsen took charge of the sextant, and Morley carried a lightweight repeating rifle for possible game that might be out of blaster range. Canteens, a pocket first-aid kit, and a small heliograph, were the final items, except for several articles which Morley unobtrusively stowed away about his person. Less than three hours after the crash, the two men shouldered their burdens, took a bearing to determine their course, and headed into the south. In a matter of minutes Spaceboat 6 was out of sight. With Madsen leading, they threaded their way through the scant undergrowth. Underfoot the dry, broad-bladed grass rustled through a morning that had no beginning or end. Farther away were other and less easily explained rustlings, and once both men froze as a half-dozen of what looked like baby dragons arrowed past within yards of them. "Formation flying, like ducks," muttered Morley, watching from the corner of his eye. When the whispering of scaled wings had died away, the castaways resumed their steady plodding into the south. Twice they crossed small fresh water brooks, providing a welcome opportunity to drink their fill, and replenish the canteens. The going was easy, since the footing was in fairly dense soil, and the scrub was not so thick as to provide any difficulties. After eight hours of nearly continuous travel, they reached the banks of a third stream. Here Madsen stopped, and dropped his knapsack to the ground. "Campsite," he grunted. "Alabama," Morley murmured. Madsen goggled. "Are you delirious? What do you mean—Alabama?" Morley laughed sheepishly. "Alabama means 'Here we rest,' I said it without thinking." Madsen was grinning now. "What beats me is how you remember all that junk. I'd go nuts if I tried to clutter up my mind with a bunch of useless data. Alabama!" "I don't have to try to remember things," Morley said thoughtfully. "If I read or hear something that seems the least bit curious or unusual, it just sticks. And sometimes it's useful." "Such as?" "Well, remember when Storybook ran a mile last year in 1.29? He was the first to break 1.30. Some joe that knew a lot about horses gave me an argument in a bar about the first horse to break 1.40. He bet me ten credits it was Man o' War. I knew it was Ten Broeck, and I got an almanac and proved it." Madsen looked up from the tin of coffee concentrate he was opening. "Hasn't anyone ever tried to win an argument by poking you one in the snoot?" "Once or twice." Morley was almost apologetic. "But I learned judo a few years ago, just for the hell of it, so I didn't get hurt much." "You're a whiz with the sabre, no doubt?" said Madsen dryly. "No, I tried swordplay for a while, but gave it up. It's a little too, er—primitive for my tastes." "Primitive!" Madsen glanced around at the alien scene and nearly choked. "I'm crossing my fingers, but what would you do if some carnivore, or a gang of those spiders suddenly appeared and started for us with evil intentions?" "I think I'd run," said Morley simply. "It was pretty dull at General Plastic but at least the comptometers weren't man-eating." Madsen blinked, and seeming to find expression difficult, forbore to answer. They ate, and relaxed on the soft sod, lulled almost into a feeling of security. Not being foolhardy, however, they slept in six hour shifts. Morley stood the first watch, and slept the second. When he awoke, Madsen was tensely examining a ration tin. Jarred into instant alertness by a feeling of urgency and alarm, Morley leaped to his feet. "Something wrong?" Without answering, Madsen handed him the tin. It was pockmarked with inch wide patches of metallic gray fungus, from several of which liquid was seeping. There was a sharp odor of decay. Madsen was hastily dumping the contents of the knapsacks on the ground. Morley joined him, and both men commenced scraping the clinging gray patches from the tins. All but three were perforated and ruined. "We'll at least be traveling light from now on," Madsen said. "Any idea what this stuff is?" "Some of that lichen, or whatever it is, was around the scene of the crash," Morley answered. "The stuff must have an affinity for tin; probably secretes some acid that dissolves it. Only trouble is, it goes through thin steel too." Madsen commenced repacking their effects. "From now on, laddie, keep your eyes peeled for game, and if you see any, use that rifle. If we don't knock down some meat, and soon, we aren't going to make it. Might as well realize it right now." "Were you ever wrecked before, Madsen?" "Once, on Venus. Cartographic expedition." "What happened?" "Tubes blew and we made a forced landing. Wound up sitting in the middle of a pile of highgrade scrap." "What did you do then?" Madsen shouldered his knapsack and smiled condescendingly. "Not a thing, Mr. Fix-it. We didn't have to. Since I seem to have accidentally stumbled on something new and strange to you, add this to your files. It's usual on cartographic trips of any length, for one ship to go out, while another stays at a temporary base, and keeps in constant directional radio contact. If anything happens, they come a-running. Makes it fine for us uninformed common people." "Oh." "Of course, this is somewhat different. If we don't get out by ourselves, whoever finds us need only say, 'X marks the spot.'" Morley didn't bother answering. No comment was necessary. He knew as well as Madsen that whatever margin of safety they possessed had been shaved to the vanishing point. They made twenty miles in a forced march, slept, ate, and then traveled again. The stunted forest grew thinner, and occasionally they crossed open spaces acres in extent. Twice they saw, in the distance, animals resembling terrestrial deer, and on the second occasion Morley tried a fruitless shot. They slept and ate again, and now the last of the rations were gone. They went on. As they made southing, the dull sun crept higher in the sky by infinitesimal degrees. Now the going became tougher. Patches of evil looking muskeg began to appear in the scrub, and the stunted trees themselves gradually gave way to six foot ferns. There were occasional signs that some creature had been foraging on the lush growth. When they found fresh tracks in the soft footing, Morley unlimbered the rifle, and the two men trod more softly. By that time either would have cheerfully made a meal on one of the miniature flying dragons, alive and kicking, and the thought of a juicy steak from some local herbivore was as soul stirring as the sight of Mecca to a true believer. Both men whirled at a sudden crashing on their left. Something like a large splay footed kangaroo broke cover, and went loping away, clearing the fern tops at every bound. In one motion Morley whipped up the rifle and fired. There was an earsplitting report, the leaper kept right on going, under forced draught, and the two castaways stared in consternation at a rifle that resembled a bundle of metallic macaroni more than it did a firearm. Madsen spoke first. "You probably got some mud in the barrel when we stopped last time," he accused. "Look at us now." Morley started to mumble an apology, but Madsen cut him short. "Look at us now," he repeated, with all stops out. "It was bad before, now it's practically hopeless. Our only long range gun! What do we do now if we do find game—dig pits for it?" If a man can be said to slink without changing his position, Morley slunk. Madsen continued, double fortissimo. "A kid of ten knows enough to keep a gun clean, but you, Mr.—Mr. Unabridged Webster in the flesh—" He stopped, temporarily out of breath. Morley regarded him abjectly, and suddenly Madsen began to feel a little ashamed. After all, the fellow had figured out that business about the meridian. "No use in having any post mortems," he said, with fine logic. "Throw that junk away. It's that much less to carry, anyway." Two hours later, they plodded wearily through the last of the swamp onto higher ground. The two haggard, muddied figures that threw themselves on the dry soil to rest bore little resemblance to the men who had parachuted from Spaceboat 6 seventy-two hours before. The slope on which they rested was tufted with small bushes. One particular type with narrow dark green leaves bore clusters of fruit like small plums, which Madsen eyed speculatively. "Do we risk it?" he asked. "Might as well." Morley was completely unaware that he had just accepted the responsibility for making a decision. "We can't afford not to risk it," he said, adding, with little show of enthusiasm, "I'll be the guinea pig." "Take it easy, chum," Madsen countered. "We'll match for it." They matched and Morley called it wrong. He plucked a sample of the fruit and stood regarding it like some bewhiskered Little Jack Horner. Finally he broke the thin skin with his thumbnail and gingerly conveyed a couple of drops of juice to his tongue. The taste was simultaneously oily and faintly sweet, and after a short wait he essayed a fair sized bite. Madsen was about to follow suit, when Morley motioned him to wait. The next second he was rolling on the ground, coughing and choking, while Madsen tried grimly to feed him water from a canteen. It was no use. The throat tissues became swollen and inflamed in seconds, to the point of agony, and swallowing was totally impossible. To this was shortly added an overpowering nausea. When the retching finally stopped, Morley tried to speak, but in vain. Even the effort meant waves of pain. Madsen watched helplessly, and when the spasms of choking finally stopped, spoke gently. "We'll be camping right here for a while, looks like. Try to get some sleep if it slacks off any. You'll be okay in a while." His doubts were hidden, and Morley thanked him with his eyes.

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Saboteur of Space By ROBERT ABERNATHY Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships. Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight. Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive. The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America. The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face. Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened. "Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered. "No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd." The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—" Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you." He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply. The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl." Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'. "Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you." "What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol. The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?" " Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—" "Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark. Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air. "So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence. "I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight." Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!" The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury." Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes. "How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?" "Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?" "And why, Ryd?" "Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—" And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world. "Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun." Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents." "I know all about your record," said Mury softly. Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?" All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips. "Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him." Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily. Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes." "I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—" "To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?" Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm: "The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !" "What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?" Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now." Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly, "What's that mean?" "The power shell—isn't coming in as planned." "You can't do that." " We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?" Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We . The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth. "You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come. Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened.... After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?" Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa. II "One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard. The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery. Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America. "All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way." The rest of the way. Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast. "No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ." For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air. Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door. Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering. The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in. It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines. "Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead. They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa. As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them. And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower. Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough. And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now. "Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet. "Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively. "Martian soldier robots!" "They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy." Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?" "Where else?" said Mury. The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late. The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up. The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation. "Yes?" he inquired frostily. "What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—" "I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?" The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness. Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner. "I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us." The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous. Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal. "Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock. Nothing happened. "Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel. Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting." Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage. "Keep him covered. Back out of the lock." Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall. He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside. The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder. "You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock. Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel. "It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more." "It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock." He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded: "What do you think you're trying to do?" "What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?" "Yet Arliess." "You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?" The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do." III Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles. Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel. A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines. Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right. "You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun. Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?" Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?" The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks. Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light. "What's that, Arliess?" The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship." "I know that well enough. What ship?" "I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars." Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive." "I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady. "I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"

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QUEST'S END By BASIL WELLS Thig's quest was not yet finished, for the Hordes of Ortha had sent another ship across the Void. Only he could halt Earth's destruction—with a weapon that was but a thought in his mind. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "I was a fool," gritted Thig. His eye crowded the eyepiece of the compact metal case on the table before him. The window was open and the ugly metal snout of the instrument pointed toward the eastern horizon. "I should have expected the men of Ortha to send a second expedition to Earth!" Thig's compact body stiffened angrily. He came to his feet, his gaze roaming about the familiar disorder of the little boathouse. Here he came daily to write the lusty sagas of the Old West that had made the name of Lewis Terry familiar to millions of readers. Here beside the pot-bellied iron stove with the single cracked lid, he had worked long hours, striving vainly to forget that he was an alien being from another distant world. Curiosity, a trait that no other Orthan had possessed for many thousands of years, had impelled him to construct a small, but powerful, etherscope, and trace the fate of the space ship he had deserted. It had been built of odds and ends of material at night, but it opened the heavens before him. He saw planets and suns, countless light years distant many of them, and eventually he found Ortha—in time to see the space ship being boarded out in space by patrolling Hordemen, and quickly destroyed. They were taking no chances on the spread of the contagion from Earth among the Orthans. For the good of the Horde, the alien that was Lewis Terry knew, the patrolmen would transmit the information they received, and then destroy themselves. In their narrow philosophy of life only the Horde mattered. He had been like that when his name was Thig, and the memories of Lewis Terry were not yet part of his life. And now another space ship was coming to Earth, coming to check on the findings of that earlier ill-fated expedition, and he alone could checkmate them!... If he had only kept watch on Ortha! He had two months, possibly a few days more than that, in which to destroy this second expedition that meant conquest and certain death for all Earth's warring millions! Two months to prepare! For the good of Ellen and the children, the children of the dead man whose identity he had stolen, he must succeed. The lusty primitives of this rich green world must never be replaced by the disciplined robot race that was the Horde. He covered his typewriter. The lock snapped with finality as he turned the key. He flexed the muscles of great arms, much too powerful for the meek appearance of the writer they were, and the blood beat hot through his squat body. "You're staying locked," he said slowly, "until the last Hordeman is wiped from the face of Earth." He smiled grimly as he reflected that his hero was trapped atop a waterless butte with a horde of Apaches howling below. "Hope you can stick it out for eight or nine weeks without water, Brazos," he said to the typed pages he was leaving. The life boat lifted sluggishly from the sands that had covered it for two years. Thig cleared each jet carefully, and then, finding them unharmed, he bored high into the stratosphere. Behind him the submarine patrol and the air-raid posts went mildly insane. They knew that some strange craft had roared up from the beach on Long Island, but they were never to know what it was. Ellen, Lewis Terry's wife, clenched the short letter that her husband had pressed into her hand as he kissed her earlier that evening. She did not know that he was really Thig, nor did the letter reveal that fact. If he was to die, he would die Lewis Terry. The letter told her simply that he must go away on a secret mission for several months. She understood now why the unshed tears had been bright in his eyes. Over the United States Thig blasted the life boat, and across the Pacific. He was getting as far from Long Island as he could, and one of his plans to destroy the Orthans called for many tons of explosives. Explosives, he told himself grimly, that the yellow men would furnish. He landed at last on a rocky strip of island that was outside the combat zone, and there commenced to lay out his trap. It would take many tons of explosives to penetrate the tough hull of the space ship he knew, but the ship must be destroyed. He had considered building a huge heat blaster, but the time was too limited and he knew how powerful were the protective shells of a space ship's skin. Gadgets he had considered; tricks that might gain for him entry into the ship where he could turn his own decomposition blaster on his brothers—all the tricks of the writing trade had passed muster before his mind's eye—but inevitably he returned to the decision that explosives gave the only certain means of destruction. There was an island not far from his landing place where the men with yellow skins had stored a great quantity of munitions and supplies. The fighting front was far to the East and at night no great precautions were taken. Any approaching fleet of bombers or surface ships would be detected long before they could reach this island. Nothing but submarines. Thig's space ship moved almost silently through the water offshore. The design of the ship that permitted no air to escape now permitted no water to enter. For many of the planets that Ortha claimed for her own possessed gaseous envelopes that were denser than water, and the Horde's ships were equipped to meet those conditions. Softly the bow of the little craft nosed up on the beach inside the harbor, and from its single lock stepped Thig. Naked he was now, as were all Hordemen, and from the harness of flexible plastic about his body there depended a decomposition blaster and an old butcher knife that he had whetted to razor sharpness. "You hear something?" asked one of the two guards. "It was the waves," his comrade said, listening for a moment. "In the darkness I can see nothing," grumbled the first Jap. "Perhaps the Marines are landing." "Ho," laughed the other guard, "the Marines are thousands of miles away. They cannot stand against the power of our Emperor." "It has been more than a year," said the fearful one, "and we have not yet conquered all of California. I have heard that a few Marines are still hiding in the Solomons." "The radio does not tell you that," scoffed the guard. "We have sunk every American boat. There are no more American airplanes in the Pacific. Soon we will all move to America and have the white barbarians to wait upon us." "Was that a Japanese bomber yesterday?" The man's rifle thunked lightly against wood. "There were circles on its wings." "There may be a few left," was the excuse of the other guard. "Now we must cease talking and walk our posts." Now Thig could make out the shapes of the guards as they went their way. One of them, the short, thick yellow man was coming slowly toward the tree that sheltered Thig. Perhaps he was dreaming of the fertile valleys of America, where the white-skinned men and women would be his servants, as he walked along. Abruptly great fingers clamped around his throat, and he felt the sting of something that slammed against his chest. His feet scuffed at the soil, and then a great roaring filled his ears. Thig eased the limp body to the earth. The other slim guard had halted, his nervously acute ears picking up some vague sound. "What—what was that?" he called to his comrade. Thig eased his blaster from its holster. In a moment the guard would arouse the other members of the garrison. The distance was too great for the knife—the man would be able to fire his rifle before he reached him. The weapon's invisible rays slammed the Jap's body backward. Even as he fell the flesh was falling, rotted by the blaster's swift decomposing action, from the man's bones. A moment later only the crumbling bones of a skeleton remained of what had been a soldier. He loaded the little ship to its capacity with explosives from the stores on the island, and before he left he touched a match to the buildings. Then he blasted off, with the water clearing explosively from his spacer's overloaded jets to arouse the sleeping warriors of the Mikado. After that first foray Thig raided many an outlying island, and looted the sunken transports that lay in the shallowed water between some of the captured islands. He mounted a heavy machine gun in the nose of his agile little craft, and many a yellow man never returned to his home landing field. By days he hid near his objectives, in the jungle or the shallow water in the shadows of a jutting coral reef, and by night he moved like a giant crab, in his space suit, among the sunken ships. His stores of explosives he concealed in a great ring around the heart of the island—the only practical landing spot for the space cruiser, already slackening its terrific drive as it passed Pluto. How many tons of the deadly material he had collected he could not tell, but there was already sufficient to blow the island and everything upon it into oblivion. Time was growing short. Less than a day remained in which to bait the trap with his own ship for bait. The cruiser's detectors would pick up the trylerium's characteristic radiations from the pitted walls of his rocket jets—the blasting jets of all space ships were made of trylerium —and they would land nearby. That he would be blown up, too, in the explosion did not matter greatly, thought Thig. Ellen, the wife of the man he had helped kill, and the children, would be safe. Earth could go on in its own bloody blundering way to a glorious future. But first he must bring back another load, the final link in the deadly ring about the landing place. Morning was at hand. He would have to work fast. He left the load where it lay and blasted off. The great bomber, with the circles painted on its wings, passed over the little island. It returned. The pilot shouted and bombs intended for a target several hundred miles to the south took their final plunge earthward. The ship was bullet-scarred—off its course—and since this was Japanese-dominated water his mistake was only natural. He took the caches of munitions for enemy supply dumps. It was his last mistake. The island dissolved into splintered fragments, and with it went the bomber and its brave crew. Thig awaited the coming of the ship from Ortha on another island. He had accepted the destruction of his long weeks of planning with the fatalism that the Horde had taught him. Since one plan had fallen through he must use another. He would persuade the Orthans that he wanted to return to his own people, and once inside, with a little good fortune, he might be able to destroy them. He had killed his two fellows on the first expedition, but already his fertile imagination had invented a logical explanation of his presence on Earth. As the great ship swung down past Luna his radiophone came into play. Their detectors might pick up his weak signals at this distance even though they would have no reason to expect an Orthan ship here on Earth. His whole plan was based on the strategy of luring them here before they could start a thorough exploration of Earth. Time went by swiftly, too swiftly, for there was no answer from the ship. He thought of taking off to meet them, but already the ship must be screaming down through the upper atmosphere. He shouted into the transmitter. A grating sound came from the receiver. A hollow sound of contact that he sensed rather than heard. A cold emotionless voice spoke in the strangely unfamiliar language of the Horde. "Who is calling the ship from Planet 72-P-3?" it demanded. "A fellow Hordeman from Ortha," replied Thig hurriedly. "I escaped from the space cruiser commanded by Torp, after madness claimed him. He struck down Kam first, and then attacked me. After he left me for dead, I took a lifeboat and escaped." "You are Thig?" said the even voice of the man from Ortha. "That is right," acknowledged the other. "Urol, commanding the second expeditionary flight to Sector 5-Z," the Hordeman identified himself. "With me are three others: Brud, Zolg, and Turb." "Zolg and Turb I know," said Thig. "We trained together." "Our detectors show that your location is in the largest body of water, near the eastern shore of the principal land mass of Planet 72-P-3. Is that correct?" "Right. There is room to berth five like yours upon this uninhabited island. Here we will be safe from the Mad Ones." Thig could almost see the Hordeman's smooth brow furrow with the unaccustomed task of thinking. The majority of the Horde's thinking was automatic, seldom did an alien thought intrude upon their formulized system of life. He smiled tautly—another gift from the dead man whose memories he had robbed was that of humor—as he listened for Urol's answer. There could be only one logical explanation for Thig's words. And Urol, like all the Hordemen, was a coldly logical being. "There is madness on this world then?" Urol asked. "That is right." Thig drew upon the story-telling genius of Terry as he related the carefully plotted story that would permit him entrance to the Orthan ship. They must believe him.... "There is madness on this world, indeed," he went on, after a moment, "but it did not originate here. Kam and Torp, when they returned from the watery planet, Planet 72-P-2, brought back the virus of madness with them. Both of them were infected, and their brief stay on this planet served to spread the disease here also. "All over Earth, or as we call it, 72-P-3, the madness is spreading. Where there was peace and plenty there is now war and starvation. Most of this sub-human animal race will be wiped out before this madness has run its course." "Yet you escaped its ravages," Urol said. "Have you discovered how to control this madness?" "But I did not escape," Thig told him. "For many days after I returned to Earth I was insane. Torp and Kam had infected me as well. But I am strong, and I threw off the disease. At intervals it recurs but I strap myself down so I cannot harm myself before the madness passes." "By the Law of the Horde," said Urol slowly, "you should be destroyed if the disease is incurable." "I know. I feared that another expedition would come and carry the madness back to the Horde. I kept myself alive to warn you. I will show you the ravages of the disease, and then destroy myself." "It is good," agreed Urol. "We are preparing to land now." The communication link snapped between them. Above the island a tiny black speck swelled until it became a vast grubby bulk of metal supported by flaring jets of gaseous fuel. The thick ship slowed its sheer drop, and with a final burst of fire from blackened jets, came to rest. Thig looked to his decomposition blaster to see that it was thoroughly charged. This was perhaps the hundredth time he had examined his weapon. He chuckled at the ease with which the leader of the mother planet's ship had been tricked into believing his fantastic tale. All that remained now was to gain admission into the space ship. He left his own little life boat and walked toward the space cruiser. He reached the outer lock and attempted to open it. It was stuck. He tugged futilely at the pitted metal of the controls, and after a moment hammered at the door with a lump of volcanic rock. A speaker from just inside the door broke in upon his labor. He dropped the rock and listened. "Why do you attack the door?" it asked. "The lock is stuck," answered Thig. "No," the Hordeman's voice said, "the lock is not stuck. It is sealed against the possibility of contamination from the atmosphere of 72-P-3." "I cannot join you?" asked Thig as calmly as he could. Despair contracted his vitals as he saw this latest plan go glimmering. "Naturally not!" The speaker's voice showed as much surprise as it was possible for an Orthan to display. "We can take no chances on the madness infecting any of us before we carry this information back to Ortha." "I will tell you as much as I know," said Thig. "It is fortunate that I am outside the ship." "Yes," agreed the voice. "Better that one die instead of four. The resources of the Horde must be conserved." All through that first night after the space ship landed beside his little life boat, Thig lay on his sleeping deck trying to work out another method to overcome the four Hordemen inside their sturdy cruiser. Explosives were out; he had lost his opportunity to blast the great ship into shards when the Allied bomber had mistaken them for Japanese supplies. Trickery that would permit him to gain entrance was negated by the sealed ports and locks of the space cruiser. He could not blast an opening through the ship's skin with his decomposition blaster—it was designed to destroy only flesh or vegetable matter. Nor could he lure a Japanese or Allied force of bombers to attack the Orthan ship. The weapons of the space cruiser would destroy such crude-winged mechanisms as might be thrown against them, and her own hull could not be damaged save by the most concentrated surprise attack. He knew how the Earthmen would work—a cautious bomber or two could attack first, and then, too late, a swarm of fighting planes and bombers would follow. He could not lure brave Allied fliers to their death in any such fashion, nor did he think that the yellow airmen could cause any worth-while damage—not that he cared how many of them were destroyed! He might be an alien being from another world, but there was now no more loyal American than Thig. He had permitted the identity of Lewis Terry to overcome his own entirely. No, he would have to solve this problem by himself. Upon Thig, and Thig alone, rested the future of the two billions of mankind. If the Horde saw through his fanciful story about the disease that was carried from Venus in the bodies of Kam and Torp, Earth would soon be overrun by the Horde. The Horde was unimaginative and logical in all that it did, a robot race of super ant-beings—and they would destroy all the human race to prevent any future revolt. But if he could somehow thwart them; destroy this expedition, or send back another mute shipload of dead bodies as he had already done, Earth might not be visited again for several centuries. And she would be ready then, with a fully developed science of her own, to beat off any invasion from Ortha. He would have to play out the game as he had started it, until an opportunity came to strike, and then he would strike hard. He went over the story he had already told the Orthans, testing it for weak points that might give him the lie, and at last he was satisfied. In no way he had offended logic—the Great War that had spread across Earth since he first arrived would but serve to corroborate his story. With morning the explosion of bombs brought Thig to his feet. He cursed as he saw three airplanes circling overhead. They had come to investigate the mighty explosion that had sent a tidal wave rolling over the nearby atolls probably, but this was going to make it awkward for Thig to finish his task. The ships were Japanese light bombers he saw. They must have seen the circles that he had painted upon his tiny space ship, and mistaken the space cruiser for a larger Allied ship of some new design. His receiver crackled as he answered the curt demands of Urol. "They are the Mad Ones," Thig said. "Their madness causes them to fight among themselves. They drop their puny explosives foolishly upon the homes of other human cattle, taking great pleasure in wanton slaughter." "But why do they attack us?" asked Urol. "Our ship cannot be harmed by their containers of expanding gases!" "It is because they are insane, their minds diseased hopelessly." Thig smiled to himself. "I will go up to meet them, and destroy them with one of their own weapons." "That is unnecessary," said Urol, "our own armament...." Thig snapped off the receiver. He sprang to the controls, and sent the little ship rocketing skyward. He patted the heavy machine-gun that had been part of his loot from one of the sunken transports. It was mounted in the nose of his craft, and already it had knocked a score of Zeros and other Jap planes from the skies. He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's engine. One! Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow. His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone, whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans! Thig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground. Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely. The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth. He clicked open his transmitter. "You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha," said Urol. "We cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from the rest of us." "That is right," agreed Thig. "I should have killed myself before you came." He paused. "I should not have tried to warn you." "You are wrong again," Urol told him. "This madness destroys your reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many years." Thig felt his lips twitch into a grin. Fortunate that these ships were not equipped with telescreens. His story had convinced the methodical, robot-like Orthans. If he could keep them from learning that there was actually no madness on Earth until he could contrive to destroy them. The next words of the commander of the space cruiser sounded thunder-loud in his ears, tumbling his plans into ruin. "We will return to Ortha with our reports at once," said Urol. Thig sat frozen in his seat for a long moment staring at the transmitter. If he could only be certain that the Horde would find no flaws in his story; that Earth would never know the destruction that the Horde would bring. And then he laughed. Fool! The Orthans were unimaginative as domesticated cattle. They were robotized animals, all but devoid of intelligence. He should have remembered sooner, for he had been one of the Horde before he stole the memories of an Earthman, and fell in love with the dead man's woman! Until he came to Earth, Thig had never known that there was such a thing as a lie. Among the men of Ortha there was no deceit or treachery. If they killed or destroyed, it was necessary. If they related any happening, however unimportant, it was painstakingly accurate. Imagination was a word that was meaningless among the disciplined billions of the Horde. They would not detect a lie for they would not recognize one! Earth was safe. "That is good," he said. "I will wait until you leave Earth, and then I will destroy the ship and myself." Over China they knifed, over the ruined cities and bomber fields, and down across Russia where vast armies locked in bloody combat. They saw here again great cities that were ravaged by war. Higher they climbed above the ocean, until, above North America, Thig dropped behind the great cruiser. He called the commander of the space cruiser then. "My fuel is almost exhausted," he said. "Prepare to dive into the Earth," said Urol in his emotionless voice. "We cannot waste the power of our ship to ray you. The senseless assaults of the madmen caused us to waste much of our power." "I am leaving now," said Thig. "May the Law of the Horde endure forever!" And under his breath: "on Ortha." Thig let the life boat drop away from the other ship. Slowly it fell at first, and then faster as gravity gripped it. Fifty miles the ship must fall before it smashed into the ground. By that time the cruiser would be already beyond the orbit of the moon, and all they would see would be the moment of impact. Friction was heating the metal skin of the ship slowly as it fell. Thig locked the controls; set the rocket relays for increasingly powerful thrusts of power, and waddled clumsily out through the lock into the frigid thin air of the stratosphere. He stepped out into emptiness. Inside the space suit it was warm, and the air was clean. When he had fallen a few miles farther he would open the glider wings, that were built into all Orthan suits instead of parachutes, and land on Long Island. But not until he was sheltered by the clouds from the view of the space cruiser. He was going back to Ellen and the children with the knowledge that Earth was saved from the Horde—saved by nothing more deadly than a lie! And the part of Thig's brain that was Lewis Terry was already busying itself with the plotting of a Western novel about the handcart pioneers.... Once he had rescued Brazos from that Apache-ringed mesa, he would get to work on it....

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He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before.... DESIRE NO MORE by Algis Budrys ( illustrated by Milton Luros ) " Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... " —Chaucer THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head. "But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that." "I've got a trade," he answered. His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly. "I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks. His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle. "A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !" The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little. " Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs. "What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress. "Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!" Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown. "But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...." "Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms. "Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly. "Yes, I'm sure !" "But, where's he going?" " Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?" " Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?" Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs. "Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically. Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen. THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree." "But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?" "I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out. The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?" Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it. The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?" Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer." The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man. The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted: "Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old." "Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar. The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact." "Oh." "Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness. Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket." The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass. "Strictly a specialist, huh?" Ish nodded. "Call it that." "But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?" Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done." The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?" "Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills. THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel. "Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter. "It's only air; nasty old air." The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened. " Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream. "Marty!" Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal. And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!" The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ... "Marty!" ... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently. She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm. "Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry." "LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while." Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot." He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know. "I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before." The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...." Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again. "I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time." All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets." "That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her. A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest. HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him. Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky. She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician. He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her. "But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!" He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him. Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite. "Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm. "Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!" And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her. "SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said. They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go. "How's it?" the FS asked. Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little. "Think you'll make it?" Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out." "Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth. "Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?" "What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it. "Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast." "Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on." The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?" "Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest. MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel. "Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice. Ish nodded. "How's that?" The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit. "Odd jobs, first of all?" "Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops." "Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?" "Ahuh." "Took some of your pay in flying lessons." "Right." MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead. Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it. "No family." Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them." Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements. "How's things between you and the opposite sex?" "About normal." "No wife—no steady girl." "Not a very good idea, in my racket." MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!" Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared. MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives." Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly. "You through with me?" MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry." Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!" "I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did." Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go. Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time. He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now. ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said. "But everybody fills out an application," she protested. "No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour. The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled." "Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back." "But nobody goes back." "Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too.... "Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high. She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly. "No wings," he said. "Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either." "Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly. "It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?" "Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go. "Who do I see?" She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?" "About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time." She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do." "Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him. Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager." "Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan. THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched. "Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!" "I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out." "That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk. The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented." "But hardly usual," he added. Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said. She smiled back. "It happens." He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager. "Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now." "Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?" Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem." The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to." Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course." The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him. "Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?" The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something." Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry." He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?" "Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all." "How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something. "Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing. "Earth," the Personnel Manager said. Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night. He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited. Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades. "It's not the same," he said. The Personnel Manager sighed. "Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets." The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum." Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it." "All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little. "ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder. "Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead." Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold. "Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said. "All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs. Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit. The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing. He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder. He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty. "It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way. MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead. "Ish." It was MacKenzie, bending over him. Ish grunted. "It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there." He was past emotions. "Yeah?" "We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! " "So?" "There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going." He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have." "I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip." "I said it was easy," Ish said. "There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?" "Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. " He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note. This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

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Raiders of the Second Moon By GENE ELLERMAN A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory, and had brought him to this tiny world—to write an end to his first existence. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us. But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by Luna's bulk, we know little. Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk, life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth. In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a sheathed dagger. Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration. Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest, and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had confirmed that belief. For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated them aloud. "New York," he said, "good ol' New York." The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle giant. Noork grinned. "Tako, woman," he greeted her. "Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you hunter or escaped slave?" "A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted narl last night when it attacked you." Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never far from the hilt of her hunting dagger. Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin. "Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes opened yet wider. "Who are you?" "I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for my friend." The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?" "That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?" "Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys." Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply. The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks. "Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will listen to it no more." But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive.... The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers. "And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I alone escaped." Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones. "Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to your city of Grath...." He smiled. The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm, numbing it so he felt nothing for some time. One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with, Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath. Noork At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied with the mud of the trail. Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of the great limb and filled his arms with fruit. A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads vanished. These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him, and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures. And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more. A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath them. His lip curled at what he saw. The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons were two long knives and a club. "So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like this." Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the stains from the dead man's foggy robe. The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the drying fabric of the mantle and donned it. Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy. For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal war. A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath. "You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water will trap you." Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted. "It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?" "I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones can be trapped and skinned." "Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull. "Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman called Sarna." And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake of Uzdon. To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley. But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the golden-skinned girl, was from another world also. The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork, the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and perhaps then he could remember better who he had been. So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end. The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk. The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but Dietrich's spacer had crashed. Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb. Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly blade well. After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's edge. Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of a braided leather rope to the ground beyond. He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull! Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep. "The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant." Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together beneath his tree. "That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than another's." "But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one." The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a good woman—and ugly, my son." "Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake." "Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions, are not unkind. "Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will complete my checking of the gardens." Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back, and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field. "Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden man's rather stupid face intently. "I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke." Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work. "The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die." "If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape from the island I will take you along." Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto. "I will help you, stranger," he agreed. "Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where Tholon Sarna is held." The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work. "Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple pits." "It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well." "If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I talked with you?" Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave. The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at three distinct levels. Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple. Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another of their number. He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the wolf-headed shape a female. These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu! Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to the slaves and common citizens of the island. As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two short swords rose to bar his way. "None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the sacrifice is chosen." Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside. In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his left. His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back. The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully. For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to blood-slippery step. The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more. He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps. In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion of the upper temple was muted to a murmur. So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm. He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes. Noork grinned. From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer here in the artificial light of the flickering torch. Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering. The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl, was held prisoner. The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and toward this Noork made his way. He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna." There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope hide. One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall. "It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike. "The priest," hissed the girl. Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he faced the burly priest of the Skull. Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man. "So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do not trust your guards, then." The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me your face before I kill you!" Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he offered. The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that drew blood from left shoulder to elbow. The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon. The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple, and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his enemy. Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets. Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms. Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders. "Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely. "No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners." Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the new robe. "My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the girl's hand. "Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is given."

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The Girls From Fieu Dayol By ROBERT F. YOUNG They were lovely and quick to learn—and their only faults were little ones! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Up until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's History of English Literature , Herbert Quidley's penchant for old books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue. Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries. On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read: asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio, asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Since when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine? Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into the literature section. He had just taken down Xenophon's Anabasis when he saw the girl walk in the door. Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job. After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered his eyes to the Anabasis and henceforth followed her progress out of their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused again and took down Taine's History of English Literature . He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it with the air of a seasoned browser. Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk. She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night. As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark was gone. He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an impatient typing student to type before his time? He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had contained the word "Cai", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got "Kai"—or "Kay". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream of borrowing. By whom—her boy friend? Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but because the term itself brought to mind the word "fiance," and the word "fiance" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him violently. I.e., "marriage". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's History under observation for a while. Her boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine, The Zeitgeist , Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route to the shelf where Taine's History reposed, take the volume down, surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages and return it to the shelf. After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second message. It was as unintelligible as the first: asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Well, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words wotnid , Fieu Dayol and snoll doper —that the two communications were in the same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last word— Yoolna —was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that she was a different person from the Klio whose name had appended the first message. He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book to the shelf and went back to the reading table and The Zeitgeist . Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out the door, he was not far behind her. She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her. When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a matter of following her inside. He decided on Operation Spill-the-sugar. It had stood him in good stead before, and he was rather fond of it. The procedure was quite simple. First you took note of the position of the sugar dispensers, then you situated yourself so that your intended victim was between you and the nearest one, then you ordered coffee without sugar in a low voice, and after the counterman or countergirl had served you, you waited till he/she was out of earshot and asked your i.v. to please pass the sugar. When she did so you let the dispenser slip from your fingers in such a way that some of its contents spilled on her lap— "I'm terribly sorry," he said, righting it. "Here, let me brush it off." "It's all right, it's only sugar," she said, laughing. "I'm hopelessly clumsy," he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs. "I beseech you to forgive me." "You're forgiven," she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a slight accent. "If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place." He pulled out his wallet, chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her— Herbert Quidley: Profiliste Her forehead crinkled. " Profiliste? " "I paint profiles with words," he said. "You may have run across some of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms, of course." "How interesting." She pronounced it "anteresting." "Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my fancy." He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a dainty sip. "You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—" "Smith. Kay Smith." She set the cup back on the counter and turned and faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished when she said, "Would you really consider word-painting my profile, Mr. Quidley?" Would he! "When can I call?" She hesitated for a moment. Then: "I think it will be better if I call on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house. I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like yourself to concentrate." Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a week, to reach the apartment phase. "Fine," he said. "When can I expect you?" She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels, she'd have been taller than he was. "I'll be in town night after next," she said. "Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?" "Perfectly." "Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley." He was so elated that when he arrived at his apartment he actually did try to write a profile. His own, of course. He sat down at his custom-built chrome-trimmed desk, inserted a blank sheet of paper in his custom-built typewriter and tried to arrange his thoughts. But as usual his mind raced ahead of the moment, and he saw the title, Self Profile , nestling noticeably on the contents page of one of the Better Magazines, and presently he saw the piece itself in all its splendid array of colorful rhetoric, sparkling imagery and scintillating wit, occupying a two-page spread. It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he went to bed. In telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table post and took up The Zeitgeist once again. He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman. And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the literature aisle and toward the T's.... The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough: fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Judging from the repeated use of the words, snoll dopers were the topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay. He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what a snoll doper was; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged. It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course, they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be quixotic enough to employ Taine's History of English Literature as a communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and a mailbox on every corner? Somehow the words "what on earth foreign organization" got turned around in his mind and became "what foreign organization on earth" and before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his normal self again. He straightened his tie with nervous fingers, checked to see if his shirt cuffs protruded the proper length from his coat sleeves, and looked around the room to see if everything was in place. Everything was—the typewriter uncovered and centered on the chrome-trimmed desk, with the sheaf of crinkly first-sheets beside it; the reference books stacked imposingly nearby; Harper's , The Atlantic and The Saturday Review showing conspicuously in the magazine rack; the newly opened bottle of bourbon and the two snifter glasses on the sideboard; the small table set cozily for two— The chimes sounded again. He opened the door. She walked in with a demure, "Hello." He took her wrap. When he saw what she was wearing he had to tilt his head back so that his eyes wouldn't fall out of their sockets. Skin, mostly, in the upper regions. White, glowing skin on which her long hair lay like forest pools. As for her dress, it was as though she had fallen forward into immaculate snow, half-burying her breasts before catching herself on her elbows, then turning into a sitting position, the snow clinging to her skin in a glistening veneer; arising finally to her feet, resplendently attired. He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the bottle. "Say when." "When!" "I admire your dress—never saw anything quite like it." "Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it." "It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?" "Thanks.... Is something wrong, Mr. Quidley?" "No, of course not. Why?" "Your hands are trembling." "Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss Smith." "Call me Kay." They touched glasses: "Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room, Herbert. I shall have to come here more often." "I hope you will, Kay." "Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet Earth." "Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely." "Thank you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too far away.... There!" "It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay." "Um, kiss me again." "I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to serve us dinner at 9:30." "Call him up. Make it 10:30." The following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The snoll-doper mystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next message transfer took place. He decided to spend the evening plotting the epic novel which he intended to write someday. He set to work immediately. He plotted mentally, of course—notes were for the hacks and the other commercial non-geniuses who infested the modern literary world. Closing his eyes, he saw the whole vivid panorama of epic action and grand adventure flowing like a mighty and majestic river before his literary vision: the authentic and awe-inspiring background; the hordes of colorful characters; the handsome virile hero, the compelling Helenesque heroine.... God, it was going to be great! The best thing he'd ever done! See, already there was a crowd of book lovers in front of the bookstore, staring into the window where the new Herbert Quidley was on display, trying to force its way into the jammed interior.... Cut to interior. FIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell me quickly, are there any more copies of the new Herbert Quidley left? BOOK CLERK: A few. You don't know how lucky you are to get here before the first printing ran out. FIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Give me a dozen. I want to make sure that my children and my children's children have a plentiful supply. BOOK CLERK: Sorry. Only one to a customer. Next? SECOND EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell me quickly, are ... there ... any ... more ... copies ... of— ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.... Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to form: a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing? Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Quidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges in communications! You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though. Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the snoll-doper enigma. The fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a snoll doper , for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an H-bomb. He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak English if her own language ran something like " ist ifedereret, hid jestig snoll doper adwo ?" He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar. He remembered the material of her dress. He remembered how she had come to his room. "I didn't know you had a taste for Taine." Her voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort, he pulled himself back. "You're early tonight," he said lamely. She appropriated the message, read it. "Put the book back," she said presently. Then, when he complied: "Come on." "Where are we going?" "I'm going to deliver a snoll doper to Jilka. After that I'm going to take you home to meet my folks." The relieved sigh he heard was his own. They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line of cars. "How long have you been reading my mail?" she asked. "Since the night before I met you." "Was that the reason you spilled the sugar?" "Part of the reason," he said. "What's a snoll doper ?" She laughed. "I don't think I'd better tell you just yet." He sighed again. "But if Jilka wanted a snoll doper ," he said after a while, "why in the world didn't she call you up and say so?" "Regulations." She pulled over to the curb in front of a brick apartment building. "This is where Jilka lives. I'll explain when I get back." He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks. So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up Earth— Her folks ! Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play along with her. A station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed with theirs. "Someone's following us," Quidley said. "Probably Jilka." Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and disappeared. "She's no longer with us," Quidley said. "She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later." "At your folks'?" "At the ship." The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then: "What ship?" he said. "The one we're going to Fieu Dayol on." " Fieu Dayol? " "Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my folks, didn't I?" "In other words, you're kidnapping me." She shook her head vehemently. "I most certainly am not! Neither according to interstellar law or your own. When you compromised me, you made yourself liable in the eyes of both." "But why pick on me? There must be plenty of men on Fieu Dayol . Why don't you marry one of them?" "For two reasons: one, you're the particular man who compromised me. Two, there are not plenty of men on Fieu Dayol . Our race is identical to yours in everything except population-balance between the sexes. At periodic intervals the women on Fieu Dayol so greatly outnumber the men that those of us who are temperamentally and emotionally unfitted to become spinsters have to look for wotnids —or mates—on other worlds. It's quite legal and quite respectable. As a matter of fact, we even have schools specializing in alien cultures to expedite our activities. Our biggest problem is the Interstellar statute forbidding us the use of local communications services and forbidding us to appear in public places. It was devised to facilitate the prosecution of interstellar black marketeers, but we're subject to it, too, and have to contrive communications systems of our own." "But why were all the messages addressed to you?" "They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock girl." April fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway. Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. "Here we are," she said. Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees. Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down the rutted road. "Jilka," Kay said. "I wonder if she got him." Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed. Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and disappear into the ship. "Next," Kay said. Quidley shook his head. "You're not taking me to another planet!" She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object "A little while ago you asked me what a snoll doper was," she said. "Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform to the sexual mores of their own societies." She did something to the object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair. " This is a snoll doper ." She prodded his ribs. "March," she said. He marched. Halfway up the plank he glanced back over his shoulder for a better look at the object pressed against his back. It bore a striking resemblance to a shotgun.

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61397

THE FACES OUTSIDE BY BRUCE McALLISTER They were all that was left of humanity—if they were still human! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane, I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the name "Diane". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always does. I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice says so. It also says that I am in a "tank", and that the water is brightest when the "sun" is over the "tank". I do not understand the meaning of "sun", but the Voice says that "noon" is when the "Sun" is over the "tank". I must mate with Diane every "noon". I do know what the "tank" is. It is a very large thing filled with water, and having four "corners", one of which is the Cave where Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the "floor" of the "tank", the "floor" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep. There are four "sides". "Sides" are smooth and blue walls, and have "view-ports"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that the things in the "view-ports" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane. But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces. The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do it as simply as we swim and sleep. But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave; Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but the Voice is always silent. I grow to hate the Faces in the "view-ports". They are always watching, watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil. The "tank" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite "side". The "tank" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be happy. The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid. Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave. It does not know. It has no one to ask. Today the "sun" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the water is brighter than most days. When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged, so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come. Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts. They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they have babies and we do not. Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back, beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the "floor". I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is very beautiful. I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love her. I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised. She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave. I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests her head on my shoulder and smiles. The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or later. "What count of planets had the Terrans infested?" The furry humanoid leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again. "Forty-three is the count, beush ," replied the other. "And the count of planets destroyed?" "Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously without resistance or losses on our part, beush ," the assistant beush answered indirectly. The room was hot, so the beush lazily passed his hand over a faintly glowing panel. The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated exceptionately well. The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with black lips. The beush , as customary, spoke first. "Inform me of the pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not been previously informed. Do not spare the details." "Of certainty, beush ," began the assistant with all the grace of an informer. "The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively be detectable." He hesitated. "And these Energi," queried the beush , "are semi-telepathic or empathic?" "Affirmative," the assistant mumbled. "Then you have there a third reason," offered the beush . "Graces be given you, beush ." The beush nodded in approval. "Continue, but negatively hesitate frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject post-present." His assistant trembled slightly. "Unequivocally affirmative. Beush , your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races. As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when we found it necessary to obliterate the total race of Terrans. The message of the annihilation arrived in retard to the Energi, so Time permitted us to devise a contra-Energi intelligence plan, a necessity since it was realized that the Energi would be disturbed by our action contra-Terrans and would, without doubt, take action contra-ourselves. "Unknown to you, beush , or to the masses and highers, an insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for our purpose." The assistant looked at the beush , picked up his partially full glass and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the beush himself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was commented to by the same, "Assistant, proceed to the protecroom." They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats, the beush reflecting and saying, "As your memory relates, that explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of the Energi, you do see why we need the formulae of the Force Domes, immediately ." There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using the rare smile of that humanoid race, the beush continued, "Do negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented." "Contented," came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, "The two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis. "One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions, to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite effective plan, your opinion, beush ?" "Quite," was the reply. "And concerning the method of info-interception?" The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his incompetency, "A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors, a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the larger controls at our end of the instruments." "And you are the agent?" "Hyper-contentedly affirmative." I have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed and told me the word to use was "damn". So today I have thrice said, "Damn the Faces. Damn them." Diane and I have decided that we want a baby. Maybe the other fish wanted them, so they got them. We want a baby. "The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their part, beush ." The beush ignored the assistant's words and said, "I have received copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought, 'want'. I query." "Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of reproduction." The name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick. I do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby. "Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is negative danger of reproduction." "Rest assured, peace, beush . "But his thoughts!" "Rest assured, higher beush ." There is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane. We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the sharks away, injuring and killing some. "Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction." " Yorbeush ," cried the assistant in defense. "It is physically impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they possess Mind Force to a degree." "To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is physically impossible?" The beush was sarcastic. "How far can they go?" "There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to, but there is no one to do so." Today I damned the Faces nine times and finally wanted them to go away. The "view-ports" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when I wanted them to. I still do not understand. There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane and caring for the baby. So I wanted the Voice to leave it. It left. "Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant. How far can they go, assistant?" The beush rose, screamed hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point blank at the neck of his assistant. The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I want her to sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips. "Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist, and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?" It has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to want them to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving them our thoughts by touching them. Today I found that none of the children have Voices. I could want them to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not right to have a Voice. The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater "tank" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy. He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane, her body very white and soft but, since I wanted it so, her hair is golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen them together, touching. Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he wants something, he will get it. So he must want a baby. "Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!" The disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the beush himself, by himself, and for the good of himself. When, if I ever do want the Voice to come back, it will be very surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies. The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine of us to want all the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right. Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will want to leave it; it is getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could have if she lived forever. Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll want ....

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61243

THE SNOWBANK ORBIT BY FRITZ LEIBER Earth could not stop the Enemy's remorseless advance from outer space. Neither could the Enemy! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her footstool. Dear blowzy old bitch-planet, swollen and pale and cold, mad with your Shakespearean moons, white-mottled as death from Venerean Plague, spinning on your side like a poisoned pregnant cockroach, rolling around the sun like a fat drunken floozie with green hair rolling on the black floor of an infinite bar-room, what a sweet last view of the Solar System you are for a cleancut young spaceman.... Grunfeld chopped off that train of thought short. He was young and the First Interstellar War had snatched him up and now it was going to pitch him and twenty other Joes out of the System on a fast curve breaking around Uranus—and so what! He shivered to get a little heat and then applied himself to the occulted star he was tracking through Prospero's bridge telescope. The star was a twentieth planetary diameter into Uranus, the crosslines showed—a glint almost lost in pale green. That meant its light was bulleting 1600 miles deep through the seventh planet's thick hydrogen atmosphere, unless he were seeing the star on a mirage trajectory—and at least its depth agreed with the time since rim contact. At 2000 miles he lost it. That should mean 2000 miles plus of hydrogen soup above the methane ocean, an America-wide layer of gaseous gunk for the captain to play the mad hero in with the fleet. Grunfeld didn't think the captain wanted to play the mad hero. The captain hadn't gone space-simple in any obvious way like Croker and Ness. And he wasn't, like Jackson, a telepathy-racked visionary entranced by the Enemy. Worry and responsibility had turned the captain's face into a skull which floated in Grunfeld's imagination when he wasn't actually seeing it, but the tired eyes deep-sunk in the dark sockets were still cool and perhaps sane. But because of the worry the captain always wanted to have the last bit of fact bearing on the least likely maneuver, and two pieces of evidence were better than one. Grunfeld found the next sizable star due to occult. Five-six minutes to rim contact. He floated back a foot from the telescope, stretching out his thin body in the plane of the ecliptic—strange how he automatically assumed that orientation in free fall! He blinked and blinked, then rested his eyes on the same planet he'd been straining them on. The pale greenish bulk of Uranus was centered in the big bridge spaceshield against the black velvet dark and bayonet-bright stars, a water-splotched and faded chartreuse tennis ball on the diamond-spiked bed of night. At eight million miles she looked half the width of Luna seen from Earth. Her whitish equatorial bands went from bottom to top, where, Grunfeld knew, they were spinning out of sight at three miles a second—a gelid waterfall that he imagined tugging at him with ghostly green gangrenous fingers and pulling him over into a hydrogen Niagara. Half as wide as Luna. But in a day she'd overflow the port as they whipped past her on a near miss and in another day she'd be as small as this again, but behind them, sunward, having altered their outward course by some small and as yet unpredictable angle, but no more able to slow Prospero and her sister ships or turn them back at their 100 miles a second than the fleet's solar jets could operate at this chilly distance from Sol. G'by, fleet. G'by, C.C.Y. spaceman. Grunfeld looked for the pale planet's moons. Miranda and Umbriel were too tiny to make disks, but he distinguished Ariel four diameters above the planet and Oberon a dozen below. Spectral sequins. If the fleet were going to get a radio signal from any of them, it would have to be Titania, occulted now by the planet and the noisy natural static of her roiling hydrogen air and seething methane seas—but it had always been only a faint hope that there were survivors from the First Uranus Expedition. Grunfeld relaxed his neck and let his gaze drift down across the curving star-bordered forward edge of Prospero's huge mirror and the thin jutting beams of the port lattice arm to the dim red-lit gages below the spaceshield. Forward Skin Temperature seven degrees Kelvin. Almost low enough for helium to crawl, if you had some helium. Prospero's insulation, originally designed to hold out solar heat, was doing a fair job in reverse. Aft (sunward) Skin Temperature 75 degrees Kelvin. Close to that of Uranus' sun-lit face. Check. Cabin Temperature 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Brr! The Captain was a miser with the chem fuel remaining. And rightly ... if it were right to drag out life as long as possible in the empty icebox beyond Uranus. Gravities of Acceleration zero. Many other zeros. The four telltales for the fleet unblinkingly glowed dimmest blue—one each for Caliban , Snug , Moth , and Starveling , following Prospero in line astern on slave automatic—though for months inertia had done all five ships' piloting. Once the buttons had been green, but they'd wiped that color off the boards because of the Enemy. The gages still showed their last maximums. Skin 793 Kelvin, Cabin 144 Fahrenheit, Gravs 3.2. All of them hit almost a year ago, when they'd been ace-ing past the sun. Grunfeld's gaze edged back to the five bulbous pressure suits, once more rigidly upright in their braced racks, that they'd been wearing during that stretch of acceleration inside the orbit of Mercury. He started. For a moment he'd thought he saw the dark-circled eyes of the captain peering between two of the bulging black suits. Nerves! The captain had to be in his cabin, readying alternate piloting programs for Copperhead. Suddenly Grunfeld jerked his face back toward the spaceshield—so violently that his body began very slowly to spin in the opposite direction. This time he'd thought he saw the Enemy's green flashing near the margin of the planet—bright green, viridian, far vivider than that of Uranus herself. He drew himself to the telescope and feverishly studied the area. Nothing at all. Nerves again. If the Enemy were much nearer than a light-minute, Jackson would esp it and give warning. The next star was still three minutes from rim contact. Grunfeld's mind retreated to the circumstances that had brought Prospero (then only Mercury One ) out here. II When the First Interstellar War erupted, the pioneer fleets of Earth's nations had barely pushed their explorations beyond the orbit of Saturn. Except for the vessels of the International Meteor Guard, spaceflight was still a military enterprise of America, Russia, England and the other mega-powers. During the first months the advantage lay wholly with the slim black cruisers of the Enemy, who had an antigravity which allowed them to hover near planets without going into orbit; and a frightening degree of control over light itself. Indeed, their principal weapon was a tight beam of visible light, a dense photonic stiletto with an effective range of several Jupiter-diameters in vacuum. They also used visible light, in the green band, for communication as men use radio, sometimes broadcasting it and sometimes beaming it loosely in strange abstract pictures that seemed part of their language. Their gravity-immune ships moved by reaction to photonic jets the tightness of which rendered them invisible except near the sun, where they tended to ionize electronically dirty volumes of space. It was probably this effective invisibility, based on light-control, which allowed them to penetrate the Solar System as deep as Earth's orbit undetected, rather than any power of travel in time or sub-space, as was first assumed. Earthmen could only guess at the physical appearance of the Enemy, since no prisoners were taken on either side. Despite his impressive maneuverability and armament, the Enemy was oddly timid about attacking live planets. He showed no fear of the big gas planets, in fact hovering very close to their turgid surfaces, as if having some way of fueling from them. Near Terra the first tactic of the black cruisers, after destroying Lunostrovok and Circumluna, was to hover behind the moon, as though sharing its tide-lockedness—a circumstance that led to a sortie by Earth's Combined Fleet, England and Sweden excepted. At the wholly disastrous Battle of the Far Side, which was visible in part to naked-eye viewers on Earth, the Combined Fleet was annihilated. No Enemy ship was captured, boarded, or seriously damaged—except for one which, apparently by a fluke, was struck by a fission-headed anti-missile and proceeded after the blast to "burn," meaning that it suffered a slow and puzzling disintegration, accompanied by a dazzling rainbow display of visible radiation. This was before the "stupidity" of the Enemy with regard to small atomic missiles was noted, or their allergy to certain radio wave bands, and also before Terran telepaths began to claim cloudy contact with Enemy minds. Following Far Side, the Enemy burst into activity, harrying Terran spacecraft as far as Mercury and Saturn, though still showing great caution in maneuver and making no direct attacks on planets. It was as if a race of heavily armed marine creatures should sink all ocean-going ships or drive them to harbor, but make no assaults beyond the shore line. For a full year Earth, though her groundside and satellite rocketyards were furiously busy, had no vehicle in deep space—with one exception. At the onset of the War a fleet of five mobile bases of the U. S. Space Force were in Orbit to Mercury, where it was intended they take up satellite positions prior to the prospecting and mineral exploitation of the small sun-blasted planet. These five ships, each with a skeleton five-man crew, were essentially Ross-Smith space stations with a solar drive, assembled in space and intended solely for space-to-space flight inside Earth's orbit. A huge paraboloid mirror, its diameter four times the length of the ship's hull, superheated at its focus the hydrogen which was ejected as a plasma at high exhaust velocity. Each ship likewise mounted versatile radio-radar equipment on dual lattice arms and carried as ship's launch a two-man chemical fuel rocket adaptable as a fusion-headed torpedo. After Far Side, this "tin can" fleet was ordered to bypass Mercury and, tacking on the sun, shape an orbit for Uranus, chiefly because that remote planet, making its 84-year circuit of Sol, was currently on the opposite side of the sun to the four inner planets and the two nearer gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. In the empty regions of space the relatively defenseless fleet might escape the attention of the Enemy. However, while still accelerating into the sun for maximum boost, the fleet received information that two Enemy cruisers were in pursuit. The five ships cracked on all possible speed, drawing on the solar drive's high efficiency near the sun and expending all their hydrogen and most material capable of being vaporized, including some of the light-metal hydrogen storage tanks—like an old steamer burning her cabin furniture and the cabins themselves to win a race. Gradually the curving course that would have taken years to reach the outer planet flattened into a hyperbola that would make the journey in 200 days. In the asteroid belt the pursuing cruisers turned aside to join in the crucial Battle of the Trojans with Earth's largely new-built, more heavily and wisely armed Combined Fleet—a battle that proved to be only a prelude to the decisive Battle of Jupiter. Meanwhile the five-ship fleet sped onward, its solar drive quite useless in this twilight region even if it could have scraped together the needed boilable ejectant mass to slow its flight. Weeks became months. The ships were renamed for the planet they were aimed at. At least the fleet's trajectory had been truly set. Almost on collision course it neared Uranus, a mystery-cored ball of frigid gas 32,000 miles wide coasting through space across the fleet's course at a lazy four miles a second. At this time the fleet was traveling at 100 miles a second. Beyond Uranus lay only the interstellar night, into which the fleet would inevitably vanish.... Unless, Grunfeld told himself ... unless the fleet shed its velocity by ramming the gaseous bulk of Uranus. This idea of atmospheric braking on a grand scale had sounded possible at first suggestion, half a year ago—a little like a man falling off a mountain or from a plane and saving his life by dropping into a great thickness of feathery new-fallen snow. Supposing her solar jet worked out here and she had the reaction mass, Prospero could have shed her present velocity in five hours, decelerating at a comfortable one G. But allowing her 12,000 miles of straight-line travel through Uranus' frigid soupy atmosphere—and that might be dipping very close to the methane seas blanketing the planet's hypothetical mineral core— Prospero would have two minutes in which to shed her velocity. Two minutes—at 150 Gs. Men had stood 40 and 50 Gs for a fractional second. But for two minutes.... Grunfeld told himself that the only surer way to die would be to run into a section of the Enemy fleet. According to one calculation the ship's skin would melt by heat of friction in 90 seconds, despite the low temperature of the abrading atmosphere. The star Grunfeld had been waiting for touched the hazy rim of Uranus. He drifted back to the eyepiece and began to follow it in as the pale planet's hydrogen muted its diamond brilliance. III In the aft cabin, lank hairy-wristed Croker pinned another blanket around black Jackson as the latter shivered in his trance. Then Croker turned on a small light at the head of the hammock. "Captain won't like that," plump pale Ness observed tranquilly from where he floated in womb position across the cabin. "Enemy can feel a candle of our light, captain says, ten million miles away." He rocked his elbows for warmth and his body wobbled in reaction like a polly-wog's. "And Jackson hears the Enemy think ... and Heimdall hears the grass grow," Croker commented with a harsh manic laugh. "Isn't an Enemy for a billion miles, Ness." He launched aft from the hammock. "We haven't spotted their green since Saturn orbit. There's nowhere for them." "There's the far side of Uranus," Ness pointed out. "That's less than ten million miles now. Eight. A bare day. They could be there." "Yes, waiting to bushwack us as we whip past on our way to eternity," Croker chuckled as he crumpled up against the aft port, shedding momentum. "That's likely, isn't it, when they didn't have time for us back in the Belt?" He scowled at the tiny white sun, no bigger a disk than Venus, but still with one hundred times as much light as the full moon pouring from it—too much light to look at comfortably. He began to button the inner cover over the port. "Don't do that," Ness objected without conviction. "There's not much heat in it but there's some." He hugged his elbows and shivered. "I don't remember being warm since Mars orbit." "The sun gets on my nerves," Croker said. "It's like looking at an arc light through a pinhole. It's like a high, high jail light in a cold concrete yard. The stars are highlights on the barbed wire." He continued to button out the sun. "You ever in jail?" Ness asked. Croker grinned. With the tropism of a fish, Ness began to paddle toward the little light at the head of Jackson's hammock, flicking his hands from the wrists like flippers. "I got one thing against the sun," he said quietly. "It's blanketing out the radio. I'd like us to get one more message from Earth. We haven't tried rigging our mirror to catch radio waves. I'd like to hear how we won the battle of Jupiter." "If we won it," Croker said. "Our telescopes show no more green around Jove," Ness reminded him. "We counted 27 rainbows of Enemy cruisers 'burning.' Captain verified the count." "Repeat: if we won it." Croker pushed off and drifted back toward the hammock. "If there was a real victory message they'd push it through, even if the sun's in the way and it takes three hours to catch us. People who win, shout." Ness shrugged as he paddled. "One way or the other, we should be getting the news soon from Titania station," he said. "They'll have heard." "If they're still alive and there ever was a Titania Station," Croker amended, backing air violently to stop himself as he neared the hammock. "Look, Ness, we know that the First Uranus Expedition arrived. At least they set off their flares. But that was three years before the War and we haven't any idea of what's happened to them since and if they ever managed to set up housekeeping on Titania—or Ariel or Oberon or even Miranda or Umbriel. At least if they built a station that could raise Earth I haven't been told. Sure thing Prospero hasn't heard anything ... and we're getting close." "I won't argue," Ness said. "Even if we raise 'em, it'll just be hello-goodby with maybe time between for a battle report." "And a football score and a short letter from home, ten seconds per man as the station fades." Croker frowned and added, "If Captain had cottoned to my idea, two of us at any rate could have got off this express train at Uranus." "Tell me how," Ness asked drily. "How? Why, one of the ship's launches. Replace the fusion-head with the cabin. Put all the chem fuel in the tanks instead of divvying it between the ship and the launch." "I haven't got the brain for math Copperhead has, but I can subtract," Ness said, referring to Prospero's piloting robot. "Fully fueled, one of the launches has a max velocity change in free-fall of 30 miles per second. Use it all in braking and you've only taken 30 from 100. The launch is still going past Uranus and out of the system at 70 miles a second." "You didn't hear all my idea," Croker said. "You put piggyback tanks on your launch and top them off with the fuel from the other four launches. Then you've 100 miles of braking and a maneuvering reserve. You only need to shed 90 miles, anyway. Ten miles a second's the close circum-Uranian velocity. Go into circum-Uranian orbit and wait for Titania to send their jeep to pick you up. Have to start the maneuver four hours this side of Uranus, though. Take that long at 1 G to shed it." "Cute," Ness conceded. "Especially the jeep. But I'm glad just the same we've got 70 per cent of our chem fuel in our ships' tanks instead of the launches. We're on such a bull's eye course for Uranus—Copperhead really pulled a miracle plotting our orbit—that we may need a sidewise shove to miss her. If we slapped into that cold hydrogen soup at our 100 mps—" Croker shrugged. "We still could have dropped a couple of us," he said. "Captain's got to look after the whole fleet," Ness said. "You're beginning to agitate, Croker, like you was Grunfeld—or the captain himself." "But if Titania Station's alive, a couple of men dropped off would do the fleet some good. Stir Titania up to punch a message through to Earth and get a really high-speed retrieve-and-rescue ship started out after us. If we've won the War." "But Titania Station's dead or never was, not to mention its jeep. And we've lost the Battle of Jupiter. You said so yourself," Ness asserted owlishly. "Captain's got to look after the whole fleet." "Yeah, so he kills himself fretting and the rest of us die of old age in the outskirts of the Solar System. Join the Space Force and See the Stars! Ness, do you know how long it'd take us to reach the nearest star—except we aren't headed for her—at our 100 mps? Eight thousand years!" "That's a lot of time to kill," Ness said. "Let's play chess." Jackson sighed and they both looked quickly at the dark unlined face above the cocoon, but the lips did not flutter again, or the eyelids. Croker said, "Suppose he knows what the Enemy looks like?" "I suppose," Ness said. "When he talks about them it's as if he was their interpreter. How about the chess?" "Suits. Knight to King Bishop Three." "Hmm. Knight to King Knight Two, Third Floor." "Hey, I meant flat chess, not three-D," Croker objected. "That thin old game? Why, I no sooner start to get the position really visualized in my head than the game's over." "I don't want to start a game of three-D with Uranus only 18 hours away." Jackson stirred in his hammock. His lips worked. "They...." he breathed. Croker and Ness instantly watched him. "They...." "I wonder if he is really inside the Enemy's mind?" Ness said. "He thinks he speaks for them," Croker replied and the next instant felt a warning touch on his arm and looked sideways and saw dark-circled eyes in a skull-angular face under a battered cap with a tarnished sunburst. Damn, thought Croker, how does the captain always know when Jackson's going to talk? "They are waiting for us on the other side of Uranus," Jackson breathed. His lips trembled into a smile and his voice grew a little louder, though his eyes stayed shut. "They're welcoming us, they're our brothers." The smile died. "But they know they got to kill us, they know we got to die." The hammock with its tight-swathed form began to move past Croker and he snatched at it. The captain had pushed off from him for the hatch leading forward. Grunfeld was losing the new star at 2200 miles into Uranus when he saw the two viridian flares flashing between it and the rim. Each flash was circled by a fleeting bright green ring, like a mist halo. He thought he'd be afraid when he saw that green again, but what he felt was a jolt of excitement that made him grin. With it came a touch on his shoulder. He thought, the captain always knows. "Ambush," he said. "At least two cruisers." He yielded the eyepiece to the captain. Even without the telescope he could see those incredibly brilliant green flickers. He asked himself if the Enemy was already gunning for the fleet through Uranus. The blue telltales for Caliban and Starveling began to blink. "They've seen it too," the captain said. He snatched up the mike and his next words rang through the Prospero . "Rig ship for the snowbank orbit! Snowbank orbit with stinger! Mr. Grunfeld, raise the fleet." Aft, Croker muttered, "Rig our shrouds, don't he mean? Rig shrouds and firecrackers mounted on Fourth of July rockets." Ness said, "Cheer up. Even the longest strategic withdrawal in history has to end some time." IV Three quarters of a day later Grunfeld felt a spasm of futile fear and revolt as the pressure suit closed like a thick-fleshed carnivorous plant on his drugged and tired body. Relax, he told himself. Fine thing if you cooked up a fuss when even Croker didn't. He thought of forty things to re-check. Relax, he repeated—the work's over; all that matters is in Copperhead's memory tanks now, or will be as soon as the captain's suited up. The suit held Grunfeld erect, his arms at his sides—the best attitude, except he was still facing forward, for taking high G, providing the ship herself didn't start to tumble. Only the cheekpieces and visor hadn't closed in on his face—translucent hand-thick petals as yet unfolded. He felt the delicate firm pressure of built-in fingertips monitoring his pulses and against his buttocks the cold smooth muzzles of the jet hypodermics that would feed him metronomic drugs during the high-G stretch and stimulants when they were in free-fall again. When. He could swing his head and eyes just enough to make out the suits of Croker and Ness to either side of him and their profiles wavy through the jutting misty cheekpieces. Ahead to the left was Jackson—just the back of his suit, like a black snowman standing at attention, pale-olive-edged by the great glow of Uranus. And to the right the captain, his legs suited but his upper body still bent out to the side as he checked the monitor of his suit with its glowing blue button and the manual controls that would lie under his hands during the maneuver. Beyond the captain was the spaceshield, the lower quarter of it still blackness and stars, but the upper three-quarters filled with the onrushing planet's pale mottled green that now had the dulled richness of watered silk. They were so close that the rim hardly showed curvature. The atmosphere must have a steep gradient, Grunfeld thought, or they'd already be feeling decel. That stuff ahead looked more like water than any kind of air. It bothered him that the captain was still half out of his suit. There should be action and shouted commands, Grunfeld thought, to fill up these last tight-stretched minutes. Last orders to the fleet, port covers being cranked shut, someone doing a countdown on the firing of their torpedo. But the last message had gone to the fleet minutes ago. Its robot pilots were set to follow Prospero and imitate, nothing else. And all the rest was up to Copperhead. Still.... Grunfeld wet his lips. "Captain," he said hesitantly. "Captain?" "Thank you, Grunfeld." He caught the edge of the skull's answering grin. "We are beginning to hit hydrogen," the quiet voice went on. "Forward skin temperature's up to 9 K." Beyond the friendly skull, a great patch of the rim of Uranus flared bright green. As if that final stimulus had been needed, Jackson began to talk dreamily from his suit. "They're still welcoming us and grieving for us. I begin to get it a little more now. Their ship's one thing and they're another. Their ship is frightened to death of us. It hates us and the only thing it knows to do is to kill us. They can't stop it, they're even less than passengers...." The captain was in his suit now. Grunfeld sensed a faint throbbing and felt a rush of cold air. The cabin refrigeration system had started up, carrying cabin heat to the lattice arms. Intended to protect them from solar heat, it would now do what it could against the heat of friction. The straight edge of Uranus was getting hazier. Even the fainter stars shone through, spangling it. A bell jangled and the pale green segment narrowed as the steel meteor panels began to close in front of the spaceshield. Soon there was only a narrow vertical ribbon of green— bright green as it narrowed to a thread—then for a few seconds only blackness except for the dim red and blue beads and semi-circles, just beyond the captain, of the board. Then the muted interior cabin lights glowed on. Jackson droned: "They and their ships come from very far away, from the edge. If this is the continuum, they come from the ... discontinuum, where they don't have stars but something else and where gravity is different. Their ships came from the edge on a gust of fear with the other ships, and our brothers came with it though they didn't want to...." And now Grunfeld thought he began to feel it—the first faint thrill, less than a cobweb's tug, of weight . The cabin wall moved sideways. Grunfeld's suit had begun to revolve slowly on a vertical axis. For a moment he glimpsed Jackson's dark profile—all five suits were revolving in their framework. They locked into position when the men in them were facing aft. Now at least retinas wouldn't pull forward at high-G decel, or spines crush through thorax and abdomen. The cabin air was cold on Grunfeld's forehead. And now he was sure he felt weight—maybe five pounds of it. Suddenly aft was up . It was as if he were lying on his back on the spaceshield. A sudden snarling roar came through his suit from the beams bracing it. He lost weight, then regained it and a little more besides. He realized it was their torpedo taking off, to skim by Uranus in the top of the atmosphere and then curve inward the little their chem fuel would let them, homing toward the Enemy. He imaged its tiny red jet over the great gray-green glowing plain. Four more would be taking off from the other ships—the fleet's feeble sting. Like a bee's, just one, in dying. The cheekpieces and foreheadpiece of Grunfeld's suit began to close on his face like layers of pliable ice. Jackson called faintly, " Now I understand. Their ship—" His voice was cut off. Grunfeld's ice-mask was tight shut. He felt a small surge of vigor as the suit took over his breathing and sent his lungs a gush of high-oxy air. Then came a tingling numbness as the suit field went on, adding an extra prop against decel to each molecule of his body. But the weight was growing. He was on the moon now ... now on Mars ... now back on Earth.... The weight was stifling now, crushing—a hill of invisible sand. Grunfeld saw a black pillow hanging in the cabin above him aft. It had red fringe around it. It grew. There was a whistling and shaking. Everything lurched torturingly, the ship's jets roared, everything recovered, or didn't. The black pillow came down on him, crushing out sight, crushing out thought. The universe was a black tingling, a limitless ache floating in a larger black infinity. Something drew back and there was a dry fiery wind on numb humps and ridges—the cabin air on his face, Grunfeld decided, then shivered and started at the thought that he was alive and in free-fall. His body didn't feel like a mass of internal hemorrhages. Or did it? He spun slowly. It stopped. Dizziness? Or the suits revolving forward again? If they'd actually come through— There was a creaking and cracking. The ship contracting after frictional heating? There was a faint stink like ammonia and formaldehyde mixed. A few Uranian molecules forced past plates racked by turbulence? He saw dim red specks. The board? Or last flickers from ruined retinas? A bell jangled. He waited, but he saw nothing. Blind? Or the meteor guard jammed? No wonder if it were. No wonder if the cabin lights were broken. The hot air that had dried his sweaty face rushed down the front of his body. Needles of pain pierced him as he slumped forward out of the top of his opening suit. Then he saw the horizontal band of stars outlining the top of the spaceshield and below it the great field of inky black, barely convex upward, that must , he realized, be the dark side of Uranus . Pain ignored, Grunfeld pushed himself forward out of his suit and pulled himself past the captain's to the spaceshield. The view stayed the same, though broadening out: stars above, a curve-edged velvet black plain below. They were orbiting. A pulsing, color-changing glow from somewhere showed him twisted stumps of the radio lattices. There was no sign of the mirror at all. It must have been torn away, or vaporized completely, in the fiery turbulence of decel. New maxs showed on the board: Cabin Temperature 214 F, Skin Temperature 907 K, Gravs 87. Then in the top of the spacefield, almost out of vision, Grunfeld saw the source of the pulsing glow: two sharp-ended ovals flickering brightly all colors against the pale starfields, like two dead fish phosphorescing. "The torps got to 'em," Croker said, pushed forward beside Grunfeld to the right. "I did find out at the end," Jackson said quietly from the left, his voice at last free of the trance-tone. "The Enemy ships weren't ships at all. They were (there's no other word for it) space animals. We've always thought life was a prerogative of planets, that space was inorganic. But you can walk miles through the desert or sail leagues through the sea before you notice life and I guess space is the same. Anyway the Enemy was (what else can I call 'em?) space-whales. Inertialess space-whales from the discontinuum. Space-whales that ate hydrogen (that's the only way I know to say it) and spat light to move and fight. The ones I talked to, our brothers, were just their parasites." "That's crazy," Grunfeld said. "All of it. A child's picture." "Sure it is," Jackson agreed. From beyond Jackson, Ness, punching buttons, said, "Quiet." The radio came on thin and wailing with static: "Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep and can orbit in to you. The two Enemy are dead—the last in the System. Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep fueled and set to go—" Fleet? thought Grunfeld. He turned back to the board. The first and last blue telltales still glowed for Caliban and Starveling . Breathe a prayer, he thought, for Moth and Snug . Something else shone on the board, something Grunfeld knew had to be wrong. Three little words: SHIP ON MANUAL. The black rim of Uranus ahead suddenly brightened along its length, which was very slightly bowed, like a section of a giant new moon. A bead formed toward the center, brightened, and then all at once the jail-yard sun had risen and was glaring coldly through its pinhole into their eyes. They looked away from it. Grunfeld turned around. The austere light showed the captain still in his pressure suit, only the head fallen out forward, hiding the skull features. Studying the monitor box of the captain's suit, Grunfeld saw it was set to inject the captain with power stimulants as soon as the Gravs began to slacken from their max. He realized who had done the impossible job of piloting them out of Uranus. But the button on the monitor, that should have glowed blue, was as dark as those of Moth and Snug . Grunfeld thought, now he can rest.

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He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!... The Holes and John Smith By Edward W. Ludwig Illustration by Kelly Freas It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place: "A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience." Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert. We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth: "The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury." But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent. Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur. "Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home. I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute." Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather. "Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked. I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled. "But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?" Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek." Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here." "Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now." Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon. "Five meenutes!" he shrieked. "Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away. We waited. Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale. "Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—" "Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head. "Using what for fare?" I asked. "Your brains?" Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too." The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano. Then it happened. From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass. The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face. His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty. The bass thumped down upon the bandstand. "Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan." A moment's silence. "Your plan?" I echoed at last. "How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already. Hummm, I thought. My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South. "We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering. "Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?" "I know everything ," said John Smith. I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths. And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro. Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then— My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet. The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard. First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles. But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string. I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm. I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus. We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan . We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle. "If I didn't hear it," I gasped, "I wouldn't believe it!" "And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk. "Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one." I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle. "Isn't right for what?" I had to ask. He turned his sad eyes to me. "For going home," he said. Hummm, I thought. We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing. But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment. "Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front." Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?" John Smith nodded. "Unusual." Hummm, I thought again. Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?" He pointed. "Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages." "Even there," he said softly, "even there...." There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana. It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play. Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo. At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?" He shook his head. "Then maybe a Venusian fizz?" His grunt was negative. "Then some old-fashioned beer?" He smiled. "Yes, I like beer." I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool. "John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night." John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan." "Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot." He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration. "I don't know," he finally drawled. "It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef, 'copter landing—if we ever get a 'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages." His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor. He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue: "No, I don't ... care much ... about playing." "What do you like to do, John?" His string-bean of a body stiffened. "I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan." Oh Lord, that plan again! I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting." He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand." Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat. "Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe." "Holes?" I kept a straight face. "Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!" I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat. His voice trembled with emotion. "Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—" "But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?" He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence. "What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!" I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?" He was speaking rapidly again now. "I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through." I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?" "Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited." His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it." "Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one." He nodded. "But it can't be too far away." "I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—" "Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand." Thank heaven! Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells. John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes. Goon-Face was still cautious. "Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?" "Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him." "Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract." "Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli." Just a few minutes later tragedy struck. A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes. "This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed. "I—I'm scared. "Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity." We watched. John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook. John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble. John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly. The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously. John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly. "He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!" I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—" We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon. "He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole." I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you." "We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration. "We're going to make a more scientific approach." "How?" John asked. Fat Boy gulped. "Just wait another day," I said. "We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work." "No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow." All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what? Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life. It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment. John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying. "John!" I cried. "You're drunk!" His watery eyes squinted at me. "No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!" "But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory." His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter." "Then what is it, John?" "It's my body. It's—" "Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?" His face was white with terror. "No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?" He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation. I patted him gingerly on the arm. "Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now." We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I. I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street. Then—he was gone. John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit. "—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it." John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed.... Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract." Without John, we're notes in a lost chord. We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith. Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy. And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city. ... THE END

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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. THE VALLEY By Richard Stockham Illustrated by Ed Emsh If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener. The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish. Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun. The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!" Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!" The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship. "I can't tell them," said the man. "Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?" The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!" "Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder." A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship." "They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—." He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here." He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over." "No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them." "We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation." She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael." He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in." The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away. The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight. A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff. And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end. Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence. A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet. The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas. And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back. The silence did not change. The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?" A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it. Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials. "Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!" "We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael. "A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be." The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands. "There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !" Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship. They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square. The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof." Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance. Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons. The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being. Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions. Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship. They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible. And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth. The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes. The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space. Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships. And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness. Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea. At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume. Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...." Lights flashed through the room and the picture died. Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling. "There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years." Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you." "Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility." "I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for." "What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria." "But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space." "We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it." The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away. "And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life." "The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?" "None." "Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?" Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President." There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again. "We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people." Michael and Mary were silent. "You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on, "until we have reached our decision." As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains. In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight. Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea. "We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space." "You could probably still go," she said quietly. He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you." She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away." He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?" "I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison." "But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice." "Maybe they'll have to give us a choice." "What're you talking about?" "They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age." He waited. "They can't stand the sight of people dying violently." Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket. "These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice." He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?" He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?" "Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this." He waited, frowning, watching her intently. "I'm—going to have a child." His face went blank. Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full. "No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it." "It's true." He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside. "Yes, I can see it is." "I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael." He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible." "Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this." "Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done." "No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could." "And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see." They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him. They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen: "This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right." Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie." Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands. "What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room." "I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again." Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now. And then there was the sound of the door opening. They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers. Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders. The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet. The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one. "Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness, "we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society." He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?" "Yes, there is." "Proceed." Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat. "Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure." The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks. "We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces. "If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born." "Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see." The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still. Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle. Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them. Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death. "Stop!" he said quietly. They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back. "If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you." The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror. "I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!" "We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves." "You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you." "We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!" The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?" Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death." The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...." There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached. Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again." "We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies." "A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes." "You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains." "There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!" Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor. It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road. Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation. "If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?" "I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison." She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road. "How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?" "All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself." "Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?" He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness. They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust. "I'm getting out," she said. "I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?" They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill. "The air smells clean," he said. "The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did. "Take off your boots, Michael. Try it." Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back." "Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop. He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?" "I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream." He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet." "I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities." He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly: "Mary!" She stopped, whirling around. He was staring down at her feet. She followed his gaze. "It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades." She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades. "They're new," he said. They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object. He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center. "Oh!" Her hand found his. They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside. Mary knelt down and drank from the spring. "It's so cool. It must come from deep down." "It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down." "We can live here, Michael!" Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child." "Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!" "And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them." They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own. There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house. ... THE END

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TERROR OUT OF SPACE by LEIGH BRACKETT An eerie story of a silver land beneath the black Venusian seas. A grim tale of brooding terror whirling out of space to drive men mad, of a menace without name or form, and of the man, Lundy, who fought the horror, his eyes blinded by his will. For to see the terror was to become its slave—a mindless automaton whose only wish was to see behind the shadowed mysterious eyelids of " IT ". [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Lundy was flying the aero-space convertible by himself. He'd been doing it for a long time. So long that the bottom half of him was dead to the toes and the top half even deader, except for two separate aches like ulcerated teeth; one in his back, one in his head. Thick pearly-grey Venusian sky went past the speeding flier in streamers of torn cloud. The rockets throbbed and pounded. Instruments jerked erratically under the swirl of magnetic currents that makes the Venusian atmosphere such a swell place for pilots to go nuts in. Jackie Smith was still out cold in the co-pilot's seat. From in back, beyond the closed door to the tiny inner cabin, Lundy could hear Farrell screaming and fighting. He'd been screaming a long time. Ever since the shot of avertin Lundy had given him after he was taken had begun to wear thin. Fighting the straps and screaming, a hoarse jarring sound with no sense in it. Screaming to be free, because of It . Somewhere inside of Lundy, inside the rumpled, sweat-soaked black uniform of the Tri-World Police, Special Branch, and the five-foot-six of thick springy muscle under it, there was a knot. It was a large knot, and it was very, very cold in spite of the sweltering heat in the cabin, and it had a nasty habit of yanking itself tight every few minutes, causing Lundy to jerk and sweat as though he'd been spiked. Lundy didn't like that cold tight knot in his belly. It meant he was afraid. He'd been afraid before, plenty of times, and he wasn't ashamed of it. But right now he needed all the brains and guts he had to get It back to Special headquarters at Vhia, and he didn't want to have to fight himself, too. Fear can screw things for you. It can make you weak when you need to be strong, if you're going to go on living. You, and the two other guys depending on you. Lundy hoped he could keep from getting too much afraid, and too tired—because It was sitting back there in its little strongbox in the safe, waiting for somebody to crack. Farrell was cracked wide open, of course, but he was tied down. Jackie Smith had begun to show signs before he passed out, so that Lundy had kept one hand over the anaesthetic needle gun holstered on the side of his chair. And Lundy thought, The hell of it is, you don't know when It starts to work on you. There's no set pattern, or if there is we don't know it. Maybe right now the readings I see on those dials aren't there at all.... Down below the torn grey clouds he could see occasional small patches of ocean. The black, still, tideless water of Venus, that covers so many secrets of the planet's past. It didn't help Lundy any. It could be right or wrong, depending on what part of the ocean it was—and there was no way to tell. He hoped nothing would happen to the motors. A guy could get awfully wet, out in the middle of that still black water. Farrell went on screaming. His throat seemed to be lined with impervium. Screaming and fighting the straps, because It was locked up and calling for help. Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, and opened his pale green eyes. "I'm cold," he said. "Hi, Midget." Lundy turned his head. Normally he had a round, fresh, merry face, with bright dark eyes and a white, small-boyish grin. Now he looked like something the waiter had swept out from under a table at four A.M. on New Year's Day. "You're cold," he said sourly. He licked sweat off his lips. "Oh, fine! That was all I needed." Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, to joggle himself. His black tunic was open over his chest, showing the white strapping of bandages, and his left hand was thrust in over the locked top of the tunic's zipper. He was a big man, not any older than Lundy, with big, ugly, pleasant features, a shock of coarse pale hair, and a skin like old leather. "On Mercury, where I was born," he said, "the climate is suitable for human beings. You Old-World pantywaists...." He broke off, turned white under the leathery burn, and said through set teeth, "Oi! Farrell sure did a good job on me." "You'll live," said Lundy. He tried not to think about how nearly both he and Smith had come to not living. Farrell had put up one hell of a fight, when they caught up with him in a native village high up in the Mountains of White Cloud. Lundy still felt sick about that. The bull-meat, the hard boys, you didn't mind kicking around. But Farrell wasn't that kind. He was just a nice guy that got trapped by something too big for him. A nice guy, crazy blind in love with somebody that didn't exist. A decent hard-working guy with a wife and two kids who'd lost his mind, heart, and soul to a Thing from outer space, so that he was willing to kill to protect It. Oh, hell! thought Lundy wearily, won't he ever stop screaming? The rockets beat and thundered. The torn grey sky whipped past. Jackie Smith sat rigid, with closed eyes, white around the lips and breathing in shallow, careful gasps. And Vhia was still a long way off. Maybe farther off than he knew. Maybe he wasn't heading toward Vhia at all. Maybe It was working on him, and he'd never know it till he crashed. The cold knot tightened in his belly like a cold blade stabbing. Lundy cursed. Thinking things like that was a sure way to punch your ticket right straight to blazes. But you couldn't help thinking, about It . The Thing you had caught in a special net of tight-woven metal mesh, aiming at something Farrell could see but you couldn't. The Thing you had forced into the glassite box and covered up with a black cloth, because you had been warned not to look at It . Lundy's hands tingled and burned, not unpleasantly. He could still feel the small savage Thing fighting him, hidden in the net. It had felt vaguely cylindrical, and terribly alive. Life. Life from outer space, swept out of a cloud of cosmic dust by the gravitic pull of Venus. Since Venus had hit the cloud there had been a wave of strange madness on the planet. Madness like Farrell's, that had led to murder, and some things even worse. Scientists had some ideas about that life from Out There. They'd had a lucky break and found one of The Things, dead, and there were vague stories going around of a crystalline-appearing substance that wasn't really crystal, about three inches long and magnificently etched and fluted, and supplied with some odd little gadgets nobody would venture an opinion about. But the Thing didn't do them much good, dead. They had to have one alive, if they were going to find out what made it tick and learn how to put a stop to what the telecommentators had chosen to call The Madness from Beyond, or The Vampire Lure. One thing about it everybody knew. The guys who suddenly went sluggy and charged off the rails all made it clear that they had met the ultimate Dream Woman of all women and all dreams. Nobody else could see her, but that didn't bother them any. They saw her, and she was— She . And her eyes were always veiled. And She was a whiz at hypnosis and mind-control. That's why She , or It , hadn't been caught alive before. Not before Lundy and Smith, with every scientific aid Special could give them, had tracked down Farrell and managed to get the breaks. The breaks. Plain fool luck. Lundy moved his throbbing head stiffly on his aching neck, blinked sweat out of his bloodshot eyes, and wished to hell he was home in bed. Jackie Smith said suddenly, "Midget, I'm cold. Get me a blanket." Lundy looked at him. His pale green eyes were half open, but not as though they saw anything. He was shivering. "I can't leave the controls, Jackie." "Nuts. I've got one hand. I can hang onto this lousy tin fish that long." Lundy scowled. He knew Smith wasn't kidding about the cold. The temperatures on Mercury made the first-generation colonists sensitive to anything below the range of an electric furnace. With the wound and all, Smith might, wind up with pneumonia if he wasn't covered. "Okay." Lundy reached out and closed the switch marked A. "But I'll let Mike do the flying. He can probably last five minutes before he blows his guts out." Iron Mike was just a pattycake when it came to Venusian atmosphere flying. The constant magnetic compensation heated the robot coils to the fusing point in practically no time at all. Lundy thought fleetingly that it was nice to know there were still a couple of things men could do better than machinery. He got up, feeling like something that had stood outside rusting for four hundred years or so. Smith didn't turn his head. Lundy growled at him. "Next time, sonny, you wear your long woolen undies and let me alone!" Then he stopped. The knot jerked tight in his stomach. Cold sweat needled him, and his nerves stung in a swift rush of fire. Farrell had quit screaming. There was silence in the ship. Nothing touched it. The rockets were outside it and didn't matter. Even Jackie Smith's careful breathing had stopped. Lundy went forward slowly, toward the door. Two steps. It opened. Lundy stopped again, quite still. Farrell was standing in the opening. A nice guy with a wife and two kids. His face still looked like that, but the eyes in it were not sane, nor even human. Lundy had tied him down to the bunk with four heavy straps. Breast, belly, thighs, and feet. The marks of them were on Farrell. They were cut into his shirt and pants, into his flesh and sinew, deep enough to show his bare white ribs. There was blood. A lot of blood. Farrell didn't mind. "I broke the straps," he said. He smiled at Lundy. "She called me and I broke the straps." He started to walk to the safe in the corner of the cabin. Lundy gagged and pulled himself up out of a cold black cloud and got his feet to moving. Jackie Smith said quietly, "Hold it, Midget. She doesn't like it there in the safe. She's cold, and she wants to come out." Lundy looked over his shoulder. Smith was hunched around in his seat, holding the needle-gun from Lundy's holster on the pilot's chair. His pale green eyes had a distant, dreamy glow, but Lundy knew better than to trust it. He said, without inflection, "You've seen her." "No. No, but—I've heard her." Smith's heavy lips twitched and parted. The breath sucked through between them, hoarse and slow. Farrell went down on his knees beside the safe. He put his hands on its blank and gleaming face and turned to Lundy. He was crying. "Open it. You've got to open it. She wants to come out. She's frightened." Jackie Smith raised the gun, a fraction of an inch. "Open it, Midget," he whispered. "She's cold in there." Lundy stood still. The sweat ran on him and he was colder than a frog's belly in the rain; and for no reason at all he said thickly, "No. She's hot. She can't breathe in there. She's hot." Then he jerked his head up and yelled. He came around to face Smith, unsteady but fast, and started for him. Smith's ugly face twisted as though he might be going to cry. "Midget! I don't want to shoot you. Open the safe!" Lundy said, "You damned fool," with no voice at all, and went on. Smith hit the firing stud. The anaesthetic needles hit Lundy across the chest. They didn't hurt much. Just a stinging prick. He kept going. No reason. It was just something he seemed to be doing at the time. Behind him Farrell whimpered once like a puppy and lay down across the little safe. He didn't move again. Lundy got down on his hands and knees and reached in a vague sort of way for the controls. Jackie Smith watched him with dazed green eyes. Quite suddenly, Iron Mike blew his guts out. The control panel let go a burst of blue flame. The glare and heat of it knocked Lundy backward. Things hissed and snarled and ran together, and the convertible began to dance like a leaf in a gale. The automatic safety cut the rockets dead. The ship began to fall. Smith said something that sounded like She and folded up in his chair. Lundy rubbed his hand across his face. The lines of it were blurred and stupid. His dark eyes had no sense in them. He began to crawl over the lurching floor toward the safe. The clouds outside ripped and tore across the ship's nose, and presently only water showed. Black, still, tideless water dotted with little islands of floating weed that stirred and slithered with a life of their own. Black water, rushing up. Lundy didn't care. He crawled through Farrell's blood, and he didn't care about that, either. He pushed Farrell's body back against the cabin wall and began to scratch at the shiny door, making noises like a hound shut out and not happy about it. The ship hit the water with a terrific smack. Spray geysered up, dead white against the black sea, fell back, and closed in. Presently even the ripples went away. Dark green weed-islands twined sinuously upon themselves, a flock of small sea-dragons flapped their jeweled wings down and began to fish, and none of them cared at all about the ship sinking away under them. Not even Lundy cared, out cold in the space-tight cabin, with his body wedged up against the safe and tears drying with the sweat on his stubbled cheeks. II The first thing Lundy knew about was the stillness. A dead feeling, as though everything in creation had stopped breathing. The second thing was his body. It hurt like hell, and it was hot, and it didn't like the thick, foul air it was getting. Lundy pushed himself into a sitting position and tried to boot his brain into action. It was hard work, because someone had split his head open four ways with an axe. It wasn't really dark in the cabin. A wavering silver glow almost like moonlight came in through the ports. Lundy could see pretty well. He could see Farrell's body sprawled out on the floor, and a mess of junk that had once been equipment. He could see the safe. He looked at it a long time. There wasn't much to look at. Just an open safe with nothing in it, and a piece of black cloth dropped on the floor. "Oh, Lord," whispered Lundy. "Oh, my Lord!" Everything hit him at once then. There wasn't much in him but his stomach, and that was tied down. But it tried hard to come up. Presently the spasms stopped, and then Lundy heard the knocking. It wasn't very loud. It had a slow, easy rhythm, as though the knocker had a lot of time and didn't care when he got in. It came from the airlock panel. Lundy got up. Slowly, cold as a toad's belly and as white. His lips drew back from his teeth and stayed there, frozen. The knocking kept on. A sleepy kind of sound. The guy outside could afford to wait. Sometime that locked door was going to open, and he could wait. He wasn't in a hurry. He would never be in a hurry. Lundy looked all around the cabin. He didn't speak. He looked sideways out of the port. There was water out there. The black sea-water of Venus; clear and black, like deep night. There was level sand spreading away from the ship. The silver light came up out of it. Some kind of phosphorescence, as bright as moonlight and faintly tinged with green. Black sea-water. Silver sand. The guy kept on knocking at the door. Slow and easy. Patient. One—two. One—two. Just off beat with Lundy's heart. Lundy went to the inner cabin, walking steadily. He looked around carefully and then went back. He stopped by the lock panel. "Okay, Jackie," he said. "In a minute. In a minute, boy." Then he turned and went very fast to the port locker and got a quart bottle out of its shock cradle, and raised it. It took both hands. After a while he dropped the bottle and stood still, not looking at anything, until he stopped shaking. Then he pulled his vac-suit down off its hook and climbed into it. His face was grey and quite blank. He took all the oxygen cylinders he could carry, emergency rations, and all the benzedrine in the medicine kit. He put the limit dose of the stimulant down on top of the brandy before he locked his helmet. He didn't bother with the needle gun. He took the two Service blasters—his own, and Smith's. The gentle knocking didn't stop. He stood for a moment looking at the open safe and the black cloth dropped beside it. Something cruel came into his face. A tightness, a twitching and setting of the muscles, and a terrible look of patience. Being under water wouldn't bother a Thing from outer space. He reached up and lifted the net of tight-woven metal-mesh down off its hook and fastened it on his belt. Then he walked over and opened the airlock door. Black water swirled in around his weighted boots, and then the door opened wide and Jackie Smith came in. He'd been waiting in the flooded lock chamber. Kicking his boots against the inner door, easy, with the slow breathing of the sea. Now the water pushed his feet down and held him upright from behind, so he could walk in and stand looking at Lundy. A big blond man with green eyes, and white bandages strapped under his open black tunic, looking at Lundy. Not long. Only for a second. But long enough. Lundy stopped himself after the third scream. He had to, because he knew if he screamed again he'd never stop. By that time the black water had pushed Jackie Smith away, over to the opposite wall, and covered his face. "Oh, Lord," whispered Lundy. "Oh Lord, what did he see before he drowned ?" No one answered. The black water pushed at Lundy, rising high around him, trying to take him over to Jackie Smith. Lundy's mouth began to twitch. He shut his teeth on his lower lip, holding it, holding his throat. He began to run, clumsily, fighting the water, and then he stopped that, too. He walked, not looking behind him, out into the flooded lock. The door slid shut behind him, automatically. He walked out across the firm green-silver sand, swallowing the blood that ran in his mouth and choked him. He didn't hurry. He was going to be walking for a long, long time. From the position of the ship when it fell he ought to be able to make it to the coast—unless It had been working on him so the figures on the dials hadn't been there at all. He checked his direction, adjusted the pressure-control in his vac-suit, and plodded on in the eerie undersea moonlight. It wasn't hard going. If he didn't hit a deep somewhere, or meet something too big to handle, or furnish a meal for some species of hungry Venus-weed, he ought to live to face up to the Old Man at H.Q. and tell him two men were dead, the ship lost, and the job messed to hell and gone. It was beautiful down there. Like the dream-worlds you see when you're doped or delirious. The phosphorescence rose up into the black water and danced there in wavering whorls of cold fire. Fish, queer gaudy little things with jewelled eyes, flicked past Lundy in darts of sudden color, and there were great stands of weed like young forests, spangling the dark water and the phosphorescent glow with huge burning spots of blue and purple and green and silver. Flowers. Lundy got too close to some of them once. They reached out and opened round mouths full of spines and sucked at him hungrily. The fish gave them a wide berth. After that, so did Lundy. He hadn't been walking more than half an hour when he hit the road. It was a perfectly good road, running straight across the sand. Here and there it was cracked, with some of the huge square blocks pushed up or tipped aside, but it was still a good road, going somewhere. Lundy stood looking at it with cold prickles running up and down his spine. He'd heard about things like this. Nobody knew an awful lot about Venus yet. It was a young, tough, be-damned-to-you planet, and it was apt to give the snoopy scientific guys a good swift boot in their store teeth. But even a young planet has a long past, and stories get around. Legends, songs, folk tales. It was pretty well accepted that a lot of Venus that was under water now hadn't been once, and vice versa. The old girl had her little whimsies while doing the preliminary mock-up of her permanent face. So once upon a time this road had crossed a plain under a hot pearl-grey sky, going somewhere. Taking caravans from the seacoast, probably. Bales of spices and spider-silk and casks of vakhi from the Nahali canebrakes, and silver-haired slave-girls from the high lands of the Cloud People, going along under sultry green liha -trees to be sold. Now it crossed a plain of glowing sand under still black water. The only trees that shadowed it were tall weeds with brilliant, hungry flowers, and the only creatures that followed it were little fish with jewelled eyes. But it was still there, still ready, still going somewhere. It was headed the same way Lundy was. It must have made a bend somewhere and turned to meet him. Lundy licked cold sweat off his lips and stepped out on it. He stepped slow and careful, like a man coming alone down the aisle of an empty church. He walked on the road for a long time. The weeds crowded in thicker along its edges. It seemed to run right through a dense forest of them that spread away as far as Lundy could see on either side. He was glad of the road. It was wide, and if he stayed in the middle of it the flowers couldn't reach him. It got darker, because of the weeds covering the sand. Whatever made the phosphorescence didn't like being crowded that way, and pretty soon it was so dark that Lundy had to switch on the light in the top of his helmet. In the edges of the beam he could see the weed fronds moving lazily with the slow breathing of the sea. The flowers were brighter here. They hung like lamps in the black water, burning with a light that seemed to come out of themselves. Sullen reds and angry yellows, and coldly vicious blues. Lundy didn't like them. The weeds grew in thicker and closer. They bulged out from their roots, in over the stone edges. The flowers opened their bright hungry mouths and yearned at Lundy, reaching. Reaching. Not quite touching. Not yet. He was tired. The brandy and the benzedrine began to die in him. He changed his oxygen cylinder. That helped, but not much. He took more dope, but he was afraid to go heavy on it lest he drive his heart too hard. His legs turned numb. He hadn't slept for a long time. Tracking Farrell hadn't been any breeze, and taking him—and It —had been plain and fancy hell. Lundy was only human. He was tired. Bushed. Cooked. Beat to the socks. He sat down and rested a while, turning off his light to save the battery. The flowers watched him, glowing in the dark. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel them, watching and waiting. After a minute or two he got up and went on. The weeds grew thicker, and taller, and heavier with flowers. More benzedrine, and damn the heart. The helmet light cut a cold white tunnel through the blackness. He followed it, walking faster. Weed fronds met and interlaced high above him, closing him in. Flowers bent inward, downward. Their petals almost brushed him. Fleshy petals, hungry and alive. He started to run, over the wheel-ruts and the worn hollows of the road that still went somewhere, under the black sea. Lundy ran clumsily for a long time between the dark and pressing walls. The flowers got closer. They got close enough to catch his vac-suit, like hands grasping and slipping and grasping again. He began using the blaster. He burned off a lot of them that way. They didn't like it. They began swaying in from their roots and down from the laced ceiling over his head. They hurt. They were angry. Lundy ran, sobbing without tears. The road did him in. It crossed him up, suddenly, without warning. It ran along smoothly under the tunnel of weeds, and then it was a broken, jumbled mass of huge stone blocks, tipped up and thrown around like something a giant's kid got tired of playing with. And the weeds had found places to stand in between them. Lundy tripped and fell, cracking his head against the back of his helmet. For a moment all he could see was bright light flashing. Then that stopped, and he realized he must have jarred a connection loose somewhere because his own light was out. He began to crawl over a great tilted block. The flowers burned bright in the darkness. Bright and close. Very close. Lundy opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a hoarse animal whimper. He was still holding the blaster. He fired it off a couple of times, and then he was on top of the block, lying flat on his belly. He knew it was the end of the line, because he couldn't move any more. The bright flowers came down through the dark. Lundy lay watching them. His face was quite blank. His dark eyes held a stubborn hatred, but nothing else. He watched the flowers fasten on his vac-suit and start working. Then, from up ahead, through the dark close tunnel of the weeds, he saw the light. It flared out suddenly, like lightning. A sheet of hot, bright gold cracking out like a whipped banner, lighting the end of the road. Lighting the city, and the little procession coming out of it. Lundy didn't believe any of it. He was half dead already, with his mind floating free of his body and beginning to be wrapped up in dark clouds. He watched what he saw incuriously. The golden light died down, and then flared out twice more, rhythmically. The road ran smooth again beyond the end of the tunnel, straight across a narrow plain. Beyond that, the city rose. Lundy couldn't see much of it, because of the weeds. But it seemed to be a big city. There was a wall around it, of green marble veined with dusky rose, the edges worn round by centuries of water. There were broad gates of pure untarnished gold, standing open on golden pintles. Beyond them was a vast square paved in cloud-grey quartz, and the buildings rose around it like the castles Lundy remembered from Earth and his childhood, when there were clouds of a certain kind at sunset. That's what the whole place looked like, under the flaring golden light. Cloud-cuckoo land at sunset. Remote, dreaming in beauty, with the black water drawn across it like a veil—something never destroyed because it never existed. The creatures who came from between the golden gates and down the road were like tiny wisps of those clouds, torn free by some cold wandering breeze and driven away from the light. They came drifting toward Lundy. They didn't seem to be moving fast, but they must have been because quite suddenly they were among the weeds. There were a lot of them; maybe forty or fifty. They seemed to be between three and four feet tall, and they were all the same sad, blue-grey, twilight color. Lundy couldn't see what they were. They were vaguely man-shaped, and vaguely finny, and something that was more than vaguely something else, only he couldn't place it. He was suddenly beyond caring. The dull black curtain around his mind got a hole in it, and fear came shrieking through it. He could feel the working and pulling of his vac-suit where the flowers were chewing on it as though it were his own skin. He could feel sweat running cold on his body. In a minute that would be sea water running, and then.... Lundy began to fight. His lips peeled back off his teeth, but he didn't make any noise except his heavy breathing. He fought the flowers, partly with the blaster, partly with brute strength. No science, no thought. Just the last blind struggle of an animal that didn't want to die. The flowers held him. They smothered him, crushed him down, wrapped him in lovely burning petals of destruction. He seared a lot of them, but there were always more. Lundy didn't fight long. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up a little toward a rigid, knotted belly, blind with sweat, his heart kicking him like a logger's boot. Cold, tense—waiting. And then the flowers went away. They didn't want to. They let go reluctantly, drawing back and snarling like cats robbed of a fat mouse, making small hungry feints at him. But they went.

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61459

THE GOVERNOR OF GLAVE BY KEITH LAUMER The revolution was over and peace restored—naturally Retief expected the worst! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I Retief turned back the gold-encrusted scarlet cuff of the mess jacket of a First Secretary and Consul, gathered in the three eight-sided black dice, shook them by his right ear and sent them rattling across the floor to rebound from the bulk-head. "Thirteen's the point," the Power Section Chief called. "Ten he makes it!" "Oh ... Mr. Retief," a strained voice called. Retief looked up. A tall thin youth in the black-trimmed gray of a Third Secretary flapped a sheet of paper from the edge of the circle surrounding the game. "The Ambassador's compliments, sir, and will you join him and the staff in the conference room at once?" Retief rose and dusted his knees. "That's all for now, boys," he said. "I'll take the rest of your money later." He followed the junior diplomat from the ward room, along the bare corridors of the crew level, past the glare panel reading NOTICE—FIRST CLASS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, through the chandeliered and draped ballroom and along a stretch of soundless carpet to a heavy door bearing a placard with the legend CONFERENCE IN SESSION. "Ambassador Sternwheeler seemed quite upset, Mr. Retief," the messenger said. "He usually is, Pete." Retief took a cigar from his breast pocket. "Got a light?" The Third Secretary produced a permatch. "I don't know why you smoke those things instead of dope sticks, Mr. Retief," he said. "The Ambassador hates the smell." Retief nodded. "I only smoke this kind at conferences. It makes for shorter sessions." He stepped into the room. Ambassador Sternwheeler eyed him down the length of the conference table. "Ah, Mr. Retief honors us with his presence. Do be seated, Retief." He fingered a yellow Departmental despatch. Retief took a chair, puffing out a dense cloud of smoke. "As I have been explaining to the remainder of my staff for the past quarter-hour," Sternwheeler rumbled, "I've been the recipient of important intelligence." He blinked at Retief expectantly. Retief raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry. "It seems," Sternwheeler went on, "that there has been a change in regime on Glave. A week ago, the government which invited the dispatch of this mission—and to which we're accredited—was overthrown. The former ruling class has fled into exile. A popular workers' and peasants' junta has taken over." "Mr. Ambassador," Counsellor Magnan broke in, rising. "I'd like to be the first—" he glanced around the table—"or one of the first, anyway, to welcome the new government of Glave into the family of planetary ruling bodies—" "Sit down, Magnan!" Sternwheeler snapped. "Of course the Corps always recognizes de facto sovereignty. The problem is merely one of acquainting ourselves with the policies of this new group—a sort of blue-collar coalition, it seems. In what position that leaves this Embassy I don't yet know." "I suppose this means we'll spend the next month in a parking orbit," Counsellor Magnan sighed. "Unfortunately," Sternwheeler went on, "the entire affair has apparently been carried off without recourse to violence, leaving the Corps no excuse to move in—that is, it appears our assistance in restoring order will not be required." "Glave was one of the old Contract Worlds," Retief said. "What's become of the Planetary Manager General and the technical staff? And how do the peasants and workers plan to operate the atmospheric purification system, the Weather Control station, the tide regulation complexes?" "I'm more concerned at present with the status of the Mission! Will we be welcomed by these peasants or peppered with buckshot?" "You say that this is a popular junta, and that the former leaders have fled into exile," Retief said. "May I ask the source?" "The despatch cites a 'reliable Glavian source'." "That's officialese for something cribbed from a broadcast news tape. Presumably the Glavian news services are in the hands of the revolution. In that case—" "Yes, yes, there is the possibility that the issue is yet in doubt. Of course we'll have to exercise caution in making our approach. It wouldn't do to make overtures to the wrong side." "Oh, I think we need have no fear on that score," the Chief of the Political Section spoke up. "I know these entrenched cliques. Once challenged by an aroused populace, they scuttle for safety—with large balances safely tucked away in neutral banks." "I'd like to go on record," Magnan piped, "as registering my deep gratification at this fulfillment of popular aspirations—" "The most popular aspiration I know of is to live high off someone else's effort," Retief said. "I don't know of anyone outside the Corps who's managed it." "Gentlemen!" Sternwheeler bellowed. "I'm awaiting your constructive suggestions—not an exchange of political views. We'll arrive off Glave in less than six hours. I should like before that time to have developed some notion regarding to whom I shall expect to offer my credentials!" There was a discreet tap at the door; it opened and the young Third Secretary poked his head in. "Mr. Ambassador, I have a reply to your message—just received from Glave. It's signed by the Steward of the GFE, and I thought you'd want to see it at once...." "Yes, of course; let me have it." "What's the GFE?" someone asked. "It's the revolutionary group," the messenger said, passing the message over. "GFE? GFE? What do the letters SIGNIFY?" "Glorious Fun Eternally," Retief suggested. "Or possibly Goodies For Everybody." "I believe that's 'Glavian Free Electorate'," the Third Secretary said. Sternwheeler stared at the paper, lips pursed. His face grew pink. He slammed the paper on the table. "Well, gentlemen! It appears our worst fears have been realized! This is nothing less than a warning! A threat! We're advised to divert course and bypass Glave entirely. It seems the GFE wants no interference from meddling foreign exploiters, as they put it!" Magnan rose. "If you'll excuse me Mr. Ambassador, I want to get off a message to Sector HQ to hold my old job for me—" "Sit down, you idiot!" Sternwheeler roared. "If you think I'm consenting to have my career blighted—my first Ambassadorial post whisked out from under me—the Corps made a fool of—" "I'd like to take a look at that message," Retief said. It was passed along to him. He read it. "I don't believe this applies to us, Mr. Ambassador." "What are you talking about? It's addressed to me by name!" "It merely states that 'meddling foreign exploiters' are unwelcome. Meddling foreigners we are, but we don't qualify as exploiters unless we show a profit—and this appears to be shaping up as a particularly profitless venture." "What are you proposing, Mr. Retief?" "That we proceed to make planetfall as scheduled, greet our welcoming committee with wide diplomatic smiles, hint at largesse in the offing and settle down to observe the lie of the land." "Just what I was about to suggest," Magnan said. "That might be dangerous," Sternwheeler said. "That's why I didn't suggest it," Magnan said. "Still it's essential that we learn more of the situation than can be gleaned from official broadcasts," Sternwheeler mused. "Now, while I can't justify risking the entire Mission, it might be advisable to dispatch a delegation to sound out the new regime." "I'd like to volunteer," Magnan said, rising. "Of course, the delegates may be murdered—" "—but unfortunately, I'm under treatment at the moment." Magnan sat down. "—which will place us in an excellent position, propaganda-wise. "What a pity I can't go," the Military Attache said. "But my place is with my troops." "The only troops you've got are the Assistant Attache and your secretary," Magnan pointed out. "Say, I'd like to be down there in the thick of things," the Political Officer said. He assumed a grave expression. "But of course I'll be needed here, to interpret results." "I appreciate your attitude, gentlemen," Sternwheeler said, studying the ceiling. "But I'm afraid I must limit the privilege of volunteering for this hazardous duty to those officers of more robust physique, under forty years of age—" "Tsk. I'm forty-one," Magnan said. "—and with a reputation for adaptability." His glance moved along the table. "Do you mind if I run along now, Mr. Ambassador?" Retief said. "It's time for my insulin shot." Sternwheeler's mouth dropped open. "Just kidding," Retief said. "I'll go. But I have one request, Mr. Ambassador: no further communication with the ground until I give the all-clear." II Retief grounded the lighter, in-cycled the lock and stepped out. The hot yellow Glavian sun beat down on a broad expanse of concrete, an abandoned service cart and a row of tall ships casting black shadows toward the silent control tower. A wisp of smoke curled up from the shed area at the rim of the field. There was no other sign of life. Retief walked over to the cart, tossed his valise aboard, climbed into the driver's seat and headed for the operations building. Beyond the port, hills rose, white buildings gleaming against the deep green slopes. Near the ridge, a vehicle moved ant-like along a winding road, a dust trail rising behind it. Faintly a distant shot sounded. Papers littered the ground before the Operations Building. Retief pushed open the tall glass door, stood listening. Slanting sunlight reflected from a wide polished floor, at the far side of which illuminated lettering over empty counters read IMMIGRATION, HEALTH and CUSTOMS. He crossed to the desk, put the valise down, then leaned across the counter. A worried face under an oversized white cap looked up at him. "You can come out now," Retief said. "They've gone." The man rose, dusting himself off. He looked over Retief's shoulder. "Who's gone?" "Whoever it was that scared you." "Whatta ya mean? I was looking for my pencil." "Here it is." Retief plucked a worn stub from the pocket of the soiled shirt sagging under the weight of braided shoulderboards. "You can sign me in as a Diplomatic Representative. A break for you—no formalities necessary. Where can I catch a cab for the city?" The man eyed Retief's bag. "What's in that?" "Personal belongings under duty-free entry." "Guns?" "No, thanks, just a cab." "You got no gun?" The man raised his voice. "That's right, fellows," Retief called out. "No gun; no knife, not even a small fission bomb. Just a few pairs of socks and some reading matter." A brown-uniformed man ran from behind the Customs Counter, holding a long-barreled blast-rifle centered on the Corps insignia stitched to the pocket of Retief's powder-blue blazer. "Don't try nothing," he said. "You're under arrest." "It can't be overtime parking. I've only been here five minutes." "Hah!" The gun-handler moved out from the counter, came up to Retief. "Empty out your pockets!" he barked. "Hands overhead!" "I'm just a diplomat, not a contortionist," Retief said, not moving. "Do you mind pointing that thing in some other direction?" "Looky here, Mister, I'll give the orders. We don't need anybody telling us how to run our business." "I'm telling you to shift that blaster before I take it away from you and wrap it around your neck," Retief said conversationally. The cop stepped back uncertainly, lowering the gun. "Jake! Horny! Pud! come on out!" Three more brown uniforms emerged from concealment. "Who are you fellows hiding from, the top sergeant?" Retief glanced over the ill-fitting uniforms, the unshaved faces, the scuffed boots. "Tell you what. When he shows up, I'll engage him in conversation. You beat it back to the barracks and grab a quick bath—" "That's enough smart talk." The biggest of the three newcomers moved up to Retief. "You stuck your nose in at the wrong time. We just had a change of management around here." "I heard about it," Retief said. "Who do I complain to?" "Complain? What about?" "The port's a mess," Retief barked. "Nobody on duty to receive official visitors! No passenger service facilities! Why, do you know I had to carry my own bag—" "All right, all right, that's outside my department. You better see the boss." "The boss? I thought you got rid of the bosses." "We did, but now we got new ones." "They any better than the old ones?" "This guy asks too many questions," the man with the gun said. "Let's let Sozier answer 'em." "Who's he?" "He's the Military Governor of the City." "Now we're getting somewhere," Retief said. "Lead the way, Jake—and don't forget my bag." Sozier was a small man with thin hair oiled across a shiny scalp, prominent ears and eyes like coal chips set in rolls of fat. He glowered at Retief from behind a polished desk occupying the center of a spacious office. "I warned you off," he snapped. "You came anyway." He leaned forward and slammed a fist down on the desk. "You're used to throwing your weight around, but you won't throw it around here! There'll be no spies pussyfooting around Glave!" "Looking for what, Mr. Sozier?" "Call me General!" "Mind if I sit down?" Retief pulled out a chair, seated himself and took out a cigar. "Curiously enough," he said, lighting up, "the Corps has no intention of making any embarrassing investigations. We deal with the existing government, no questions asked." His eyes held the other's. "Unless, of course, there are evidences of atrocities or other illegal measures." The coal-chip eyes narrowed. "I don't have to make explanations to you or anybody else." "Except, presumably, the Glavian Free Electorate," Retief said blandly. "But tell me, General—who's actually running the show?" A speaker on the desk buzzed. "Hey, Corporal Sozier! Wes's got them two hellions cornered. They're holed up in the Birthday Cake—" "General Sozier, damn you! and plaster your big mouth shut!" He gestured to one of the uniformed men standing by. "You! Get Trundy and Little Moe up here—pronto!" He swiveled back to Retief. "You're in luck. I'm too busy right now to bother with you. You get back over to the port and leave the same way you came—and tell your blood-sucking friends the easy pickings are over as far as Glave's concerned. You won't lounge around here living high and throwing big parties and cooking up your dirty deals to get fat on at the expense of the working man." Retief dribbled ash on Sozier's desk and glanced at the green uniform front bulging between silver buttons. "Who paid for your potbelly, Sozier?" he inquired carelessly. Sozier's eyes narrowed to slits. "I could have you shot!" "Stop playing games with me, Sozier," Retief rapped. "There's a squadron of Peace Enforcers standing by just in case any apprentice statesmen forget the niceties of diplomatic usage. I suggest you start showing a little intelligence about now, or even Horny and Pud are likely to notice." Sozier's fingers squeaked on the arms of his chair. He swallowed. "You might start by assigning me an escort for a conducted tour of the capital," Retief went on. "I want to be in a position to confirm that order has been re-established, and that normal services have been restored. Otherwise it may be necessary to send in a Monitor Unit to straighten things out." "You know you can't meddle with the internal affairs of a sovereign world!" Retief sighed. "The trouble with taking over your boss's job is discovering its drawbacks. It's disillusioning, I know, Sozier, but—" "All right! Take your tour! You'll find everything running as smooth as silk! Utilities, police, transport, environmental control—" "What about Space Control? Glave Tower seems to be off the air." "I shut it down. We don't need anything and we don't want anything from the outside." "Where's the new Premier keeping himself? Does he share your passion for privacy?" The general got to his feet. "I'm letting you take your look, Mr. Big Nose. I'm giving you four hours. Then out! And the next meddling bureaucrat that tries to cut atmosphere on Glave without a clearance gets burned!" "I'll need a car." "Jake! You stick close to this bird. Take him to the main power plant, the water works and the dispatch center. Ride him around town and show him we're doing okay without a bunch of leeches bossing us. Then dump him at the port—and see that he leaves." "I'll plan my own itinerary, thanks. I can't promise I'll be finished in four hours—but I'll keep you advised." "I warned you—" "I heard you. Five times. And I only warned you once. You're getting ahead of me." Retief rose, motioned to the hulking guard. "Come on, Jake. We've got a lot of ground to cover before we come back for our dinner." III At the curb, Retief held out his hand. "Give me the power cylinder out of your rifle, Jake." "Huh?" "Come on, Jake. You've got a nervous habit of playing with the firing stud. We don't want any accidents." "How do you get it out? They only give me this thing yesterday." Retief pocketed the cylinder. "You sit in back. I'll drive." He wheeled the car off along a broad avenue crowded with vehicles and lined with flowering palms, behind which stately white buildings reared up into the pale sky. "Nice looking city, Jake," Retief said conversationally. "What's the population?" "I dunno. I only been here a year." "What about Horny and Pud? Are they natives?" "Whatta ya mean, natives? They're just as civilized as me." "My boner, Jake. Known Sozier long?" "Sure. He useta come around to the club." "I take it he was in the army under the old regime?" "Yeah—but he didn't like the way they run it. Nothing but band playing and fancy marching. There wasn't nobody to fight." "Just between us, Jake—where did the former Planetary Manager General go?" Retief watched Jake's heavy face in the mirror. Jake jumped, clamped his mouth shut. "I don't know nothing." Half an hour later, after a tour of the commercial center, Retief headed towards the city's outskirts. The avenue curved, leading up along the flank of a low hill. "I must admit I'm surprised, Jake," Retief said. "Everything seems orderly. No signs of riots or panic. Power, water, communications normal—just as the general said. Remarkable, isn't it, considering that the entire managerial class has packed up and left?" "You wanta see the Power Plant?" Retief could see perspiration beaded on the man's forehead under the uniform cap. "Sure. Which way?" With Jake directing, Retief ascended to the ridge top, cruised past the blank white facade of the station. "Quiet, isn't it?" Retief pulled the car in to the curb. "Let's go inside." "Huh? Corporal Sozier didn't say nothing—" "You're right, Jake. That leaves it to our discretion." "He won't like it." "The corporal's a busy man, Jake. We won't worry him by telling him about it." Jake followed Retief up the walk. The broad double doors were locked. "Let's try the back." The narrow door set in the high blank wall opened as Retief approached. A gun barrel poked out, followed by a small man with bushy red hair. He looked Retief over. "Who's this party, Jake?" he barked. "Sozier said show him the plant," Jake said. "What we need is more guys to pull duty, not tourists. Anyway, I'm Chief Engineer here. Nobody comes in here 'less I like their looks." Retief moved forward, stood looking down at the redhead. The little man hesitated, then waved him past. "Lucky for you I like your looks." Inside, Retief surveyed the long room, the giant converter units, the massive busbars. Armed men—some in uniform, some in work clothes or loud sport shirts—stood here and there. Other men read meters, adjusted controls or inspected dials. "You've got more guards than workers," Retief said. "Expecting trouble?" The redhead bit the corner from a plug of spearmint. He glanced around the plant. "Things is quiet now; but you never know." "Rather old-fashioned equipment isn't it? When was it installed?" "Huh? I dunno. What's wrong with it?" "What's your basic power source, a core sink? Lithospheric friction? Sub-crustal hydraulics?" "Beats me, Mister. I'm the boss here, not a dern mechanic." A gray-haired man carrying a clipboard walked past, studied a panel, made notes, glanced up to catch Retief's eye, moved on. "Everything seems to be running normally," Retief remarked. "Sure. Why not?" "Records being kept up properly?" "Sure. Some of these guys, all they do is walk around looking at dials and writing stuff on paper. If it was me, I'd put 'em to work." Retief strolled over to the gray-haired man, now scribbling before a bank of meters. He glanced at the clipboard. Power off at sunset. Tell Corasol was scrawled in block letters across the record sheet. Retief nodded, rejoined his guard. "All right, Jake. Let's have a look at the communications center." Back in the car, headed west, Retief studied the blank windows of office buildings, the milling throngs in beer bars, shooting galleries, tattoo parlors, billiard halls, pinball arcades, bordellos and half-credit casinos. "Everybody seems to be having fun," he remarked. Jake stared out the window. "Yeah." "Too bad you're on duty, Jake. You could be out there joining in." "Soon as the corporal gets things organized, I'm opening me up a place to show dirty tri-di's. I'll get my share." "Meanwhile, let the rest of 'em have their fun, eh Jake?" "Look, Mister, I been thinking. Maybe you better gimme back that kick-stick you taken outa my gun...." "Sorry, Jake; no can do. Tell me, what was the real cause of the revolution? Not enough to eat? Too much regimentation?" "Naw, we always got plenty to eat. There wasn't none of that regimentation up till I joined up in the corporal's army." "Rigid class structure, maybe? Educational discrimination?" Jake nodded. "Yeah, it was them schools done it. All the time trying to make a feller do some kind of class. Big shots. Know it all. Gonna make us sit around and view tapes. Figgered they was better than us." "And Sozier's idea was you'd take over, and you wouldn't have to be bothered." "Aw, it wasn't Sozier's idea. He ain't the big leader." "Where does the big leader keep himself?" "I dunno. I guess he's pretty busy right now." Jake snickered. "Some of them guys call themselves colonels turned out not to know nothing about how to shoot off the guns." "Shooting, eh? I thought it was a sort of peaceful revolution. The managerial class were booted out, and that was that." "I don't know nothing," Jake snapped. "How come you keep trying to get me to say stuff I ain't supposed to talk about? You want to get me in trouble?" "Oh, you're already in trouble, Jake. But if you stick with me, I'll try to get you out of it. Where exactly did the refugees head for? How did they leave? Must have been a lot of them; I'd say in a city of this size alone, they'd run into the thousands." "I don't know." "Of course, it depends on your definition of a big shot. Who's included in that category, Jake?" "You know, the slick-talking ones; the fancy dressers; the guys that walk around and tell other guys what to do. We do all the work and they get all the big pay." "I suppose that would cover scientists, professional men, executives, technicians of all sorts, engineers, teachers—all that crowd." "Yeah, them are the ones." "And once you got them out of the way, the regular fellows would have a chance. Chaps that don't spend all their time taking baths and reading books and using big words; good Joes that don't mind picking their noses in public." "We got as much right as anybody—" "Jake, who's Corasol?" "He's—I don't know." "I thought I overheard his name somewhere." "Uh, here's the communication center," Jake cut in. Retief swung into a parking lot under a high blank facade. He set the brake and stepped out. "Lead the way, Jake." "Look, Mister, the corporal only wanted me to show you the outside." "Anything to hide, Jake?" Jake shook his head angrily and stamped past Retief. "When I joined up with Sozier, I didn't figger I'd be getting in this kind of mess." "I know, Jake. It's tough. Sometimes it seems like a fellow works harder after he's thrown out the parasites than he did before." A cautious guard let Retief and Jake inside, followed them along bright-lit aisles among consoles, cables, batteries of instruments. Armed men in careless uniforms lounged, watching. Here and there a silent technician worked quietly. Retief paused by one, an elderly man in a neat white coverall, with a purple spot under one eye. "Quite a bruise you've got there," Retief commented heartily. "Power failure at sunset," he added softly. The technician hesitated, nodded and moved on. Back in the car, Retief gave Jake directions. At the end of three hours, he had seen twelve smooth-running, heavily guarded installations. "So far, so good, Jake," he said. "Next stop, Sub-station Number Nine." In the mirror, Jake's face stiffened. "Hey, you can't go down there—" "Something going on there, Jake?" "That's where—I mean, no. I don't know." "I don't want to miss anything, Jake. Which way?" "I ain't going down there," Jake said sullenly. Retief braked. "In that case, I'm afraid our association is at an end, Jake." "You mean ... you're getting out here?" "No, you are." "Huh? Now wait a minute, Mister! The corporal said I was to stay with you." Retief accelerated. "That's settled, then. Which way?" IV Retief pulled the car to a halt two hundred yards from the periphery of a loose crowd of brown-uniformed men who stood in groups scattered across a broad plaza, overflowing into a stretch of manicured lawn before the bare, functional facade of sub-station number Nine. In the midst of the besieging mob, Sozier's red face and bald head bobbed as he harangued a cluster of green-uniformed men from his place in the rear of a long open car. "What's it all about, Jake?" Retief enquired. "Since the parasites have all left peacefully, I'm having a hard time figuring out who'd be holed up in the pumping station—and why. Maybe they haven't gotten the word that it's all going to be fun and games from now on." "If the corporal sees you over here—" "Ah, the good corporal. Glad you mentioned him, Jake. He's the man to see." Retief stepped out of the car and started through the crowd. A heavy lorry loaded with an immense tank with the letter H blazoned on its side trundled into the square from a side street, moved up to a position before the building. A smaller car pulled alongside Sozier's limousine. The driver stepped down, handed something to Sozier. A moment later, Sozier's amplified voice boomed across the crowd. "You in there, Corasol! This is General Sozier, and I'm warning you to come out now or you and your smart friends are in for a big surprise. You think I won't blast you out because I don't want to wreck the planet. You see the tank aboard the lorry that just pulled up? It's full of gas—and I got plenty of hoses out here to pump it inside with. I'll put men on the roof and squirt it in the ventilators." Sozier's voice echoed and died. The militiamen eyed the station. Nothing happened. "I know you can hear me, damn you!" Sozier squalled. "You'd better get the doors open and get out here fast!" Retief stepped to Sozier's side. "Say, Corporal, I didn't know you went in for practical jokes." Sozier jerked around to gape at Retief. "What are you doing here!" he burst out. "I told Jake—where is that—" "Jake didn't like the questions I was asking," Retief said, "so he marched me up here to report to you." "Jake, you damn fool!" Sozier roared. "I got a good mind—" "I disagree, Sozier," Retief cut in. "I think you're a complete imbecile. Sitting out here in the open yelling at the top of your lungs, for example. Corasol and his party might get annoyed and spray that fancy car you've swiped with something a lot more painful than words." "Eh?" Sozier's head whipped around to stare at the building. "Isn't that a gun I see sticking out?" Sozier dropped. "Where?" "My mistake. Just a foreign particle on my contact lenses." Retief leaned on the car. "On the other hand, Sozier, most murderers are sneaky about it. I think making a public announcement is a nice gesture on your part. The Monitors won't have any trouble deciding who to hang when they come in to straighten out this mess." Sozier scrambled back onto his seat. "Monitors?" he snarled. "I don't think so. I don't think you'll be around to do any blabbering to anybody." He raised his voice. "Jake! March this spy over to the sidelines. If he tries anything, shoot him!" He gave Retief a baleful grin. "I'll lay the body out nice and ship it back to your cronies. Accidents will happen, you know. It'll be a week or two before they get around to following up—and by then I'll have this little problem under control." Jake looked at Retief uncertainly, fingering his empty rifle. Retief put his hands up. "I guess you got me, Jake," he said. "Careful of that gun, now." Jake glanced at Sozier, gulped, aimed the rifle at Retief and nodded toward the car. As Retief moved off, a murmur swept across the crowd. Retief glanced back. A turret on the station roof was rotating slowly. A shout rose; men surged away from the building, scuffling for way; Sozier yelled. His car started up, moved forward, horns blaring. As Retief watched, a white stream arced up from the turret, catching the sun as it spanned the lawn, plunged down to strike the massed men in a splatter of spray. It searched across the mob, came to rest on Sozier's car. Uniformed men scrambled for safety as the terrified driver gunned the heavy vehicle. The hose followed the car, dropping a solid stream of water on Sozier, kicking and flailing in the back seat. As the car passed from view, down a side street, water was overflowing the sides. "The corporal will feel all the better for an invigorating swim in his mobile pool," Retief commented. "By the way, Jake, I have to be going now. It wouldn't be fair to send you back to your boss without something to back up your story that you were outnumbered, so—" Retief's left fist shot out to connect solidly with Jake's jaw. Jake dropped the gun and sat down hard. Retief turned and headed for the pumping station. The hose had shut down now. A few men were standing, eyeing the building anxiously. Others watched his progress across the square. As Retief passed, he caught scattered comments: "—seen that bird before." "—where he's headed." "—feller Sozier was talking to...." "Hey, you!" Retief was on the grass now. Ahead, the blank wall loomed up. He walked on briskly. "Stop that jasper!" a shout rang out. There was a sharp whine and a black spot appeared on the wall ahead. Near it, a small personnel door abruptly swung inward. Retief sprinted, plunged through the opening as a second shot seared the paint on the doorframe. The door clanged behind him. Retief glanced over the half dozen men confronting him. "I'm Retief, CDT, acting Charge," he said. "Which of you gentlemen is Manager-General Corasol?"

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AIDE MEMOIRE BY KEITH LAUMER The Fustians looked like turtles—but they could move fast when they chose! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet of parchment and looked grave. "This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—" "Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five." "The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—" "That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody." "Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future. You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception." "I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control group—" "To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting sponsorship for a matter of weeks now." "Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and athletic development," Retief said. "If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well anticipate us. They're very active here." "That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke instead of us." "Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air. Retief raised one eyebrow. "For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a positive statement." Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he said. "I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would help." "Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity." "Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience, Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise you, for example, would be tripping over your beard." Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian." Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your permission, Mr. Ambassador...?" Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me, Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with Youth groups—would create a far better impression." "Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the alignment of this SCARS organization?" "You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said. "Politics mean nothing to them ... yet." "Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but business. But what has Fust got that they could use?" "You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan. "Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci are barely ahead of them." "Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like fission bombs." Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying the social patterns of the local youth." "I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack." II Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards. It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them, shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the shipyard gates, creaked to a halt. "Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian. "Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste." Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up professional racing," he said. "Daredevil." He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed. Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back. A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace peered out at Retief. "Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new liner today." "May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist. "The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of papers." "I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner." The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines.... "What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief. "I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief. "We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger. "Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in nightmares! Put by the plans!" "My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project." The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why should it be secret?" "You tell me." The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said. "We merely construct a passenger liner." "Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out." The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?" "Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the shame for the discourtesy of youth." Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed through the drawings, clicking the shutter. "A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent day by day." "Why don't you elders clamp down?" "Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new. Unknown in my youth was such insolence." "The police—" "Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have we needed ought ere now." "What's behind it?" "They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with them." Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed the hut, then started toward it. "That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?" "Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled. "Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions." "I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?" "The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well, stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance. "Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks." He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate. The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight: "Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage, arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your intransigence." Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep back. Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline. The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray. Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but the thought failed to keep the chill off. Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced. "That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No need to crowd up." "There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed. "I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me." The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied. The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car, tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure. So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight. They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault, after running a copy for the reference files. And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in the Eastern Arm. But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly Fustian hadn't told them anything. At least not willingly.... Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the shipyard. The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position. Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old fellow had put up a struggle. There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of a warehouse. Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various fittings in the lock. It snicked open. He eased the door aside far enough to enter. Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head. Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine and pulled the sack free. "It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you into this." The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth, Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments." "How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help." "Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It would be your life." "I doubt if they'd go that far." "Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light here. But for the toughness of my hide...." Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a sound like a seal coughing. "Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons to complete the task." "Weapons? I thought it was illegal!" "Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide fuel to the Devil himself." "The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is." "And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the block and tackle." Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away. The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest. Slowly he got to his feet. "My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours." "Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right now, let's get out of here." Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp, bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in my wrath. Slock, beware!" "Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He knelt, sniffed at the spot. "What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?" Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge Moss Rock ." "The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?" "I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements after I have settled a score with certain Youths." "We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium pile." III Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the official luxury space barge Moss Rock . "A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter. "A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away to sleep." "Let's go aboard and take a look around." They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it. "Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers. "Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?" "I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He passed the metal band to Retief. "SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast." Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm embrace. "Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?" "The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace. "Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind." "No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength." "Ask him where the titanite is tucked away." "Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain." The youth gurgled. "Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the elder, mouth snapping. "This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder." "That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around." The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the bare back of the Fustian— "By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!" Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old. But I thought—" "This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the carapace and leave the patient living." "It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us and get out of here. His folks may come home." "Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned. Three youths came from behind the sheds. "Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight. Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers holding the bag, I'll bet." "Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk. "Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars. "I'll jump around and distract them." Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians. They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the Moss Rock as Whonk took him in full charge. Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed hastily, seriously dented but still mobile. Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast, but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her." "The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?" "The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about this gambit." "Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one." "Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I know where to find the boss." A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music. Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr. Ambassador." "I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He turned back to the Fustian on his left. "Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous." The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the Lament of Hatching ," he said; "our National Dirge." "Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of instruments—" "It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial Ambassador suspiciously. "Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly. "And if I may interrupt a moment—" Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived, perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies." "This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much do you know about them, Mr. Minister?" "Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a carapace to tame their irresponsibility." "We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful energies," said Magnan. "Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge." "But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on us to make happy these golden hours." The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit." "But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations," cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—" "You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled boreholes and blasted." "Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow! Slop I believe his name is." "Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—" Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering. Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose. Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green wine gushed on the tablecloth. "What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked, breathing deeply. "Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine. "Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in sideways. There's a matter you should know about—" "Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr. Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group." Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know." "Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to catch a few shots of the presentation." Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room, took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras. "How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve during the years ahead." Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival. Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth. Slock stared at him, drew back. "You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember? It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're building." IV With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear of the floor. "Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen. "Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy. The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed. The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo." Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!" "The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was planned for today. When the Moss Rock blew, a variety of clues were to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity." "The Moss Rock ?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic. Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!" Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan watched, open-mouthed. "The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their purpose." "Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase. Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest." Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in Whonk's wake. In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a code letter. No reply. He tried another. "No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."

test

20013

Pointillism Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's obstruction of justice case against President Clinton is likely to turn on his identification of the author of the so-called "Talking Points." Like Shakespeare's works and the Bible, the TP, a three-page document, has inspired numerous schools of thought that disagree on the meaning of seemingly banal phrases and discern the handiwork of different authors. As a service to scholars in the burgeoning field of TP Studies--as well as to the general public--here is a Talmudic exegesis, a Reader's Guide to the TP . Background: Only one person claims to have firsthand knowledge of the TP's origins: Linda Tripp. Tripp told Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff that Monica Lewinsky had given her the TP on Jan. 14, 1998, while driving Tripp home from work. That night, Tripp handed the document over to Starr's office. The following day, wearing an FBI-supplied wire, she met Lewinsky at the Pentagon City, Va., Ritz-Carlton. FBI agents interrupted their conversation and took Lewinsky to a room in the hotel for questioning. The TP advises Tripp on crafting an affidavit that would recant statements she had made to Newsweek 's Isikoff. Tripp told Isikoff last summer that she had bumped into Kathleen Willey after she left the Oval Office Nov. 29, 1993, and that Willey had looked flushed, lipstickless, and happy. Three days before Tripp received the TP, Willey gave sworn testimony in the Paula Jones case that the president had fondled her breasts and placed her hand on his crotch. Tripp had been scheduled to be deposed in the Jones case in December, but the deposition was postponed. Whodunit? There are seven theories about the authorship of the TP. The leading suspects: Lewinsky, Tripp, her ex-lawyer Kirby Behre, Clinton, Bruce Lindsey (the president's closest aide), the Right-Wing Conspiracy, and a collaboration among several of the above. Click here for a summary of the major theories. The TP appears to have been composed in three parts, each in a different voice. The first section, in which Tripp receives legal-sounding advice, is smoothly and efficiently written. The document then shifts from the substance of the affidavit to the strategy behind it, with special reference to Tripp's relationship with the president's lawyer Robert Bennett. The final portion recasts the original section in the first person. It also includes a chatty paragraph discrediting allegations about Lewinsky's alleged affair with Clinton. Exegesis: This is the widely circulated version of the TP. For annotations, click on the hot-linked phrases. Points to Make in an Affidavit Your first few paragraphs should be about yourself--what you do now, what you did at the White House, and for how many years you were there as a career person and as a political appointee. You and Kathleen were friends. At around the time of her husband's death (The President has claimed it was after her husband died. Do you really want to contradict him?), she came to you after she allegedly came out of the oval and looked (however she looked), you don't recall her exact words, but she claimed at the time (whatever she claimed) and was very happy. You did not see her go in or see her come out. Talk about when you became out of touch with her and maybe why. The next you heard of her was when a Newsweek reporter (I wouldn't name him specifically) showed up in your office saying she was naming you as someone who would corroborate that she was sexually harassed. You spoke with her that evening, etc., and she relayed to you a sequence of events that was very dissimilar from what you remembered happening. As a result of your conversation with her and subsequent reports that showed that she had tried to enlist the help of someone else in her lie that the President sexually harassed her, you now do not believe that what she claimed happened really happened. You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc. You never saw her go into the oval office, or come out of the oval office. You are not sure you've been clear about whose side you're on. (Kirby has been saying you should look neutral; better for credibility but you aren't neutral. Neutral makes you look like you're on the other team since you are a political appointee) It's important to you that they think you're a team player, after all, you are a political appointee. You believe that they think you're on the other side because you wouldn't meet with them. You want to meet with Bennett. You are upset about the comment he made, but you'll take the high road and do what's in your best interest. December 18th, you were in a better position to attend an all day or half-day deposition, but now you are into JCOC mode. Your livelihood is dependent on the success of this program. Therefore, you want to provide an affidavit laying out all of the facts in lieu of a deposition. You want Bennett's people to see your affidavit before it's signed. Your deposition should include enough information to satisfy their questioning. By the way, remember how I said there was someone else that I knew about. Well, she turned out to be a huge liar. I found out she left the WH because she was stalking the P or something like that. Well, at least that gets me out of another scandal I know about. The first few paragraphs should be about me--what I do now, what I did at the White House and for how many years I was there as a career person and as a political appointee. Kathleen and I were friends. At around the time of her husband's death, she came to me after she allegedly came out of the oval office and looked _____, I don't recall her exact words, but she claimed at the time ______ and was very happy. I did not see her go in or see her come out. Talk about when I became out of touch with her and maybe why. The next time I heard of her was when a Newsweek reporter showed up in my office saying she was naming me as a someone who would corroborate that she was sexually harassed by the President. I spoke with her that evening, etc., and she relayed to me a sequence of events that was very dissimilar from what I remembered happening. As a result of my conversation with her and subsequent reports that showed she had tried to enlist the help of someone else in her lie that the President sexually harassed her, I now do not believe that what she claimed happened really happened. I now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc. I never saw her go into the oval office, or come out of the oval office. I have never observed the President behave inappropriately with anybody. Note 1 Here are seven good guesses about the authorship of the TP: 1) Lewinsky, the Lone Gunman. Panic-stricken by Tripp's threat that she would expose Lewinsky's affair with Clinton if asked about it in a deposition, Lewinsky mustered all her intellectual resources to cobble together the TP. Lewinsky's former lawyer, William Ginsburg, never denied his client's involvement in the document's preparation. Strikes against this theory: a) Lewinsky doesn't have enough knowledge of the law. b) Apparently, she is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Tripp has said she immediately suspected the TP was too deftly crafted to have originated with Lewinsky. c) Lewinsky was too panic-stricken to have acted this rationally. Before Christmas, for example, the tapes record her suggesting that Tripp have a "foot accident" and be hospitalized during the time her deposition was scheduled to take place. 2) Tripp, the Manipulative Bitch. Gunning to bring down the president after Bennett denounced her, Tripp entrapped Lewinsky. One scenario has her prodding the gullible young woman to write the TP so she, Tripp, could get physical evidence of obstruction of justice. Another has her drafting a chunk of the TP--or even the entire thing--herself. A senior White House official has even suggested a draft of the TP lives on the hard drive of Tripp's computer. The theory's defects: a) Why would Tripp risk getting caught fabricating evidence when she has mountains of damning tapes and e-mail? b) While the tapes expose Tripp as a horrible friend and a vicious schemer, we have no evidence that she is capable of conceiving of such a complicated machination. 3) The Right-Wing Conspiracy. An elaboration of the Tripp theory. Without any specific evidence, proponents of this theory posit that Tripp drafted the TP with the assistance of lawyers involved in the Jones case or otherwise committed to conservative causes. 4) Behre, the White House Mole. When Tripp testified before Congress about Travelgate and Foster's death, the White House helped her retain Behre. She fired him three days before the TP surfaced, when he asked her to hand the tapes over to Bennett. Behre has the knowledge and the motive (he's loyal to the White House) to write the TP. (Some implicate Behre's replacement, James Moody. It seems unlikely, however, that Moody, a conservative stalwart, would have helped Tripp prepare talking points apparently so favorable to the president.) And while the document presents legal-sounding advice, it's too rambling, repetitive, and error-ridden to have been written out by a lawyer worth his salt (though it might be notes based on a lawyer's advice). In addition, lawyers know better than to give a witness written instructions about the preparation of false testimony. Note, however, that, as one observer argues, if the TP is entirely true (Willey did muss her own clothes, etc.), assisting in its preparation would not be unethical or tantamount to subornation of perjury--though it would then be most unlikely that the TP was prepared by Moody or a right-wing cabal. 5) Clinton, the Dictator. A lawyer by training, Clinton spent much time on the phone with Lewinsky. He could have dictated points during his calls, and he has a clear interest in changing Tripp's testimony. But in crises such as this one, Clinton has historically turned to proxies for his dirty work. Moreover the TP is wrong about what Clinton said in his Jones deposition about when his meeting with Willey took place. 6) Lindsey, the Fixer. Immediately following the TP's release, reporters fingered the president's confidant as a suspect. He was the administration's point man on the Jones case and has been known to wipe up after Clinton's bimbo eruptions. And he had reason to believe he could change or blunt the impact of Tripp's testimony. In August, Tripp told Newsweek she doubted Clinton's advances to Willey constituted sexual harassment, as Willey--despite her later protestations--had not seemed upset at the time. Tripp also contacted Lindsey last summer to discuss the Willey affair. Tripp and Lindsey spoke on at least two more occasions, according to the New York Times . However, there is no evidence that Lewinsky and Lindsey knew each other or ever communicated. 7) A Combo of the Above. While there is no credible scenario in which the people mentioned above could have concocted the TP on their own, several of the suspects could have worked in concert. For instance, it is plausible Tripp and Lewinsky collaborated on the TP with insight from a trained lawyer (Clinton, Lindsey, Behre). As our annotation of the text shows, the TP appears to be the handiwork of multiple authors. Back to story. Note 2 One scenario has the president dictating points over the phone to Lewinsky, with whom he spent much time talking. A lawyer by training, Clinton has a clear interest in changing Tripp's testimony. But the author of the TP seems unfamiliar with Clinton's actual testimony in the Paula Jones case, in which he said Willey's visit occurred before her husband's suicide. This contradiction might exculpate Clinton. But it does not necessarily clear aide Lindsey or others close to the president. After all, the president's sealed, private testimony contradicts his lawyer Bennett's public pronouncements that the encounter with Willey took place after her husband's suicide. Back to story. Note 3 According to Howard Kurtz's book Spin Cycle , this characterization of the Oval Office is common only among White House staffers. And it seems possible that a White House staffer wrote a chunk of the TP. Immediately following the TP's release, reporters fingered Lindsey as the leading suspect. Many speculate that he wipes up after the president's bimbo eruptions; he was also the administration's point man on the Jones case. Lindsey also had reason to believe he could change Tripp's testimony. Last summer, Tripp contacted Lindsey to discuss the Willey affair (she told Newsweek that because Willey didn't seem upset at the time, she didn't think Willey had been sexually harassed). Tripp and Lindsey spoke at least two more times, according to the New York Times . However, there is no evidence that Lewinsky and Lindsey knew each other or ever communicated. Back to story. Note 4 The parenthetical phrasing is emblematic of the tight construction of the first half of the TP. Some theorists have pointed to it as evidence that a lawyer drafted--or at least advised on the drafting of--the document. Fabricating evidence would, of course, be a highly unethical activity for a lawyer, but if, as some administration advocates maintain, the TP is all true, assistance in its drafting would not be unethical. However, as noted later, the TP makes legal errors, and the smooth phrasing could as easily be that of a PR person, journalist, or nonpracticing lawyer. Nonetheless, it casts doubt on the theory that Lewinsky was the lone author. Tripp told Newsweek she suspected immediately that the TP was too deftly crafted to have originated with Lewinsky. Lewinsky's former lawyer Ginsburg never denied his client's involvement in the document's preparation (his theory is that it was a collaborative effort). Back to story. Note 5 Why doesn't the author want to mention Isikoff, the reporter in question? Only Tripp had a clear interest in not seeming unduly familiar with him. For months, she had been meeting clandestinely with Isikoff, discussing her conversations with Lewinsky. Tripp had hoped to remain anonymous in Isikoff's story. There's no good reason why Lindsey should have inserted this detail. Aside from this sentence, there is no specific hint that Tripp penned the TP to entrap Lewinsky. However, Tripp had a motive: She wanted to take down the president after Bennett, his lawyer, denounced her. One scenario has Tripp--with the assistance of lawyers involved in the Jones case or otherwise committed to conservative causes--prodding the gullible Lewinsky to write the TP so she, Tripp, would have clear evidence of attempted obstruction of justice. Another has Tripp drafting a chunk of the TP--or even the whole thing--herself. A senior administration official has suggested that a draft of the TP lives on Tripp's hard drive. The defect with these theories: Why would Tripp risk getting caught fabricating evidence when she has mountains of damning tapes and e-mail? Back to story. Note 7 "Someone else" apparently refers to Julie Steele, a friend of Willey's. Steele initially told Newsweek that Willey had confided the details of the incident with Clinton to her shortly after it happened. Later, Steele changed her story, saying Willey had told her that the president had "made a pass" at her only weeks after the alleged incident and that she had lied at Willey's behest. Back to story. Note 8 On its face, the suggestion seems highly unlikely: that Willey, who had gone in seeking a job from the president, would leave the Oval Office and stop to muss herself, hoping to run into someone who could later confirm a false allegation of sexual advances by Clinton. However, by this time, Steele had changed her story, saying Willey had asked her to lie about exactly when Willey had confided in her and also about the details of the alleged sexual encounter. The suggestion in the TP would be consistent with the amended Steele statements. The TP also says Willey's blouse was untucked--a point that has been cited as evidence Willey was lying, since an untucked blouse would probably have been noticed by the other people waiting in the reception area outside the Oval Office. However, Tripp is quoted in Newsweek as observing only that Willey was "disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off." So the added detail in the TP may have been intended to further discredit Willey. Back to story. Note 9 At this juncture, it seems another author takes over. Note the "the oval" is now referred to as the "oval office." Also, this sentence essentially repeats the advice already given: "You did not see her go in or see her come out." The TP's tenor and tone shift from legalistic to colloquial. Back to story. Note 10 The author is obviously on the side he or she thinks Tripp would do well to be on. As subsequent sentences make clear, that side is the administration's--as distinct from Jones'. Back to story. Note 11 When Tripp testified before Congress about Travelgate and Vince Foster's death, the White House helped her retain lawyer Kirby Behre. She fired Behre three days before she gave the TP to Starr, when, she says, Behre asked her to hand the tapes over to Bennett. Behre has the knowledge and the motive (he's loyal to the White House) to have written the TP. The writer is familiar with what Behre has been telling Tripp and calls him by his first name, which might suggest Tripp (or perhaps Lewinsky, who has been discussing Tripp's legal strategy with her) is the author. However, New York Observer columnist Philip Weiss says presidential adviser and troubleshooter Lindsey also commonly refers to everyone but the president by a first name. However, Behre denies having talked with Lindsey. Back to story. Note 12 This is clumsily phrased: The identity of the "other side" is ambiguous. It sounds more like loose drafting by a PR person than it does the work of a practicing lawyer. Back to story. Note 13 The New York Times and others, quoting "lawyers connected to the case," report Lindsey had earlier advised Tripp to seek Bennett's help, advice Tripp eschewed. Back to story. Note 14 Bennett was quoted as saying that "Linda Tripp is not to be believed" in the Willey controversy. Back to story. Note 15 The date when Tripp was originally scheduled to be deposed by Jones' lawyers. Back to story. Note 16 This is the acronym for the Joint Civilian Orientation Course, a program Tripp ran at the Pentagon. Lewinsky, as well as Tripp, would be familiar with the acronym, as would people in the White House who knew where Tripp had been placed following her transfer. Back to story. Note 17 Presumably, only someone with legal training--though not necessarily a practicing lawyer--would know that an affidavit could substitute for a deposition. However, this is not good lawyerly advice. It is unlikely that Jones' lawyers would have accepted an affidavit in lieu of a deposition from someone who had changed her story. Back to story. Note 18 The writer means "affidavit," since the stated point of this exercise is to enable Tripp to avoid being deposed in person. This is not a mistake that a practicing lawyer would make, though it could be a mistake made in dictation. Back to story. Note 19 The remainder of the document is cast in the first rather than the second person. And, in this paragraph--though not in the following ones--the tone becomes more chatty. This might suggest that Tripp herself is writing the TP in her own words. However, if Tripp were creating a bogus document for purposes of entrapment, it would not seem in her interest to recast second-person paragraphs from earlier in the document in such a way that they are potentially confusing. Back to story. Note 20 This apparent reference to Lewinsky is the only substantive addition to the second part of the document. It seems unlikely that Lewinsky would refer to herself as a "big liar" who was "stalking" the president. However, Lewinsky had recently given sworn testimony in the Jones case that flatly contradicted her lengthy taped conversations with Tripp, in which she had talked about her affair with Clinton. So it is possible that she decided it was better to label herself a liar in this context than to face perjury charges. The word "huge," which appears here, is used by Tripp three times in the transcript of her taped conversations with Lewinsky reported in Newsweek . This point is made by Skip Fox and Jack Gillis, two academics at the University of Southwestern Louisiana whose analysis of the TP may be found here. Back to story. Note 21 Narcissistic phrasing that allegedly sounds very much like Lewinsky. Back to story. Note 22 No effort is made to fill in the blanks. This suggests Tripp is not attempting to construct a first draft in her own words following the earlier instructions. Back to story. Note 23 In the Washington Post version of the TP--given here--a second-person version of this sentence does not appear in the first section of the document. In ABC's version of the document, it appears in both places. Both the Post and ABC claim to have copies of the original TP. In itself, the discrepancy has no apparent significance, although it has been pointed to by theorists who contend that the TP was leaked through more than one source. Back to story.

test

20005

Does Everybody Do It? Campaign finance is an arcane and confusing subject, filled with unspoken understandings. One of these is the distinction between rules that must be obeyed and rules that can be safely flouted. In the Republican primaries, for instance, aides to Bob Dole admitted that they were going to exceed legal limits on how much they could spend, an act commentators compared at the time to running a red light. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton and his aides were helping to develop the so-called "issue" ads produced by state parties--ads which, in theory, weren't supposed to be co-ordinated with his re-election effort. And neither party even bothered to claim that the tens of millions being raised in so-called "soft money," which cannot be legally used for federal elections, was being spent on anything other than the federal election. None of these clear violations was deemed to be especially scandalous, even by prudes at places like Common Cause. Meanwhile, though, a Dole supporter named Simon Fireman is confined to his Boston apartment, where he wears an electronic collar and ponders the $6 million fine he must pay for enlisting his employees at Aqua Leisure Industries, a maker of inflatable pool toys, in a scheme to contribute $69,000 to the Dole campaign. A similar invisible line separates the campaign-finance violations that become major media scandals and those that go unmentioned or rate only as footnotes in the press. It is not immediately obvious why reporters are so fascinated by John Huang's possible use of his position at the Commerce Department to raise money for his party, while they largely ignored the last two secretaries of commerce, Clinton's Ron Brown and George Bush's Robert Mosbacher, who were using the entire department as a fund-raising vehicle. Why is Newt Gingrich's use of GOPAC to raise undisclosed contributions a scandal being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, while Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour's front for avoiding disclosure, the National Policy Forum, rates as a nonstory? In fact, there is no logic to any of it. What's considered an outrage, and even what's considered a crime, are matters determined largely by accident. Advocates of reform are always happy to have a high-profile scandal, like the presently unfolding "Indogate," to help them sensitize the public to just how seamy the whole business of campaign financing is. The last thing they're about to do is explain away the latest revelations as just an exotically textured version of what goes on every day. And press coverage is largely driven by how big a fuss is made by members of the opposition--not by any barometer of relative venality. Right now, Republicans are making an enormous fuss about the Democrats, so the story is huge. But we must pause and ask: Are we making an example out of the DNC for misdeeds that everybody commits? Or did John Huang and James Riady--and perhaps Harold Ickes and Bill Clinton--really do something unusually bad in the last campaign cycle? Much hinges, of course, on facts we don't have. Huang may have asked all his Asian contributors whether they were legal residents of the United States and been misled by them. There's no hard evidence that he did DNC business at Commerce or government business after Clinton moved him to the DNC in 1995. But assuming, for purposes of argument, that most of what has been alleged by Republicans is true, the Indonesian scandal potentially involves three categories of wrongdoing: 1) accepting illegal contributions; 2) trading favors for contributions; and 3) misusing a government position to raise campaign money. Actually, there is a fourth question--whether Huang violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by dealing with his old company, the Indonesian-based Lippo conglomerate, while he was a midlevel official at the Commerce Department. But that's a matter of personal corruption unrelated to the Democratic Party financing, so I won't dwell on it here, even though it's potentially the most serious charge against Huang. Question 1: The DNC has now returned nearly half of the $2.5 million in soft money raised by Huang from Indonesian and other Asian-American sources. Assuming that these contributions were illegal because the contributors weren't legal residents (something that has been fully established only in the case of one $250,000 Korean contribution), did Huang and the DNC do anything out of the ordinary ? Answer: Not really. There are examples beyond number of simply illegal contributions that the press and public just shrugged off. Even Pat Robertson got busted in 1988 for the use of a Christian Broadcasting Network plane--his travels were valued at $260,000. If one focuses on the narrow category of contributions that are illegal because they come from foreigners (even though it is arguably no worse than any other category of violation), there is still little novelty to the Huang affair. Federal Election Commission files disclose many examples of money taken illegally from foreign nationals: Japanese interests contributing to candidates in local races in Hawaii, South Americans giving to the Democratic Party of Florida, and so on. Just a few weeks ago, the RNC returned $15,000 to a Canadian company called Methanex after the contribution was disclosed in Roll Call . 's recent $1 million contribution to the California Republican Party may fall into this category as well. The same goes for contributions that are illegal by virtue of their having been made "in the name of another," an issue that has surfaced in connection with Al Gore's Buddhist temple fund-raiser. The FEC has frequently disallowed contributions made to both parties under aliases. If the Huang case is novel, it would have to be as a deliberate and systematic violation of the laws regarding contributions by noncitizens. In terms of being systematic, there isn't much of a case. Both parties have employed ethnic fund-raisers--Jewish, Korean, Greek, Chinese--for many years. Newt Gingrich held a Sikh fund-raising event last year in California. in 1992 was Yung Soo Yoo, who makes John Huang look like a piker when it come to sleaze. One of the co-chairs of Asian-Americans for Bob Dole was California Rep. Jay Kim, who is under investigation by the FEC for taking illegal contributions from four Korean companies. According to those with experience in fund raising, it is often a delicate matter to establish whether ethnic donors are eligible to give. When someone offers to write you a check for $5,000, you do not ask to see a green card. The reality that neither party is in the habit of investigating its donors is illustrated by various outrageous incidents. In 1992, for example, Republicans got contributions totaling $633,770 from a Japanese-American with Hong Kong connections named Michael Kojima. No one bothered to ask where Kojima, a failed restaurateur with ex-wives suing him for nonsupport, got the money. Ironically enough, his biggest creditor turns out to have been the Lippo Bank of Los Angeles, where he owed $600,000. Huang was not really an innovator; he was simply more successful than his predecessors in both parties in tapping ethnic subcultures for cash. What Huang's higher-ups at the DNC can most be faulted for is not following suspicions they should have had about the huge sums he was reeling in. Instead, they looked the other way. In 1994, the DNC abandoned its own procedure for vetting contributions for legality. We don't know exactly why this happened, but it's a good bet that it had something to do with the pressure coming from the White House to raise extraordinary amounts of money for the upcoming 1996 race. The culture of fund-raising rewards quantity, not care. It discourages close scrutiny and too many questions. The less you ask, the more you get. And given that there has been no real enforcement of these rules in the past, fund-raisers haven't lost a lot of sleep about contributions turning out to be tainted. If the money goes bad, you simply return it with the appropriate regretful noises. Question 2: Is the Lippo scandal an egregious example of a political quid pro quo? Answer: Definitely not. Examples of favors in exchanges for campaign contributions are plentiful. Consider, for instance, the relationship between Bob Dole and Chiquita. In 1995, Dole introduced legislation to impose trade sanctions on Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica--but not Honduras, where Dole's favorite bananas are grown. Why was a senator from Kansas so interested in bananas? It might have had something to do with Chiquita giving $677,000 to the Republican Party in the last campaign cycle or the generous offer by its CEO, Carl Lindner, to let Dole use the company jet. ("Sen. Dole has taken this position because it is right for America," Dole spokeswoman Christina Martin said earlier this year. "To suggest any other reason is totally absurd.") Or, there is the relationship between . This kind of treatment for big contributors is quite routine. In the Indonesia case, however, there is as yet no evidence that President Clinton did anything about his backer James Riady's concerns over trade with China and Indonesia beyond listening to them. Nor is there likely to be any evidence: Big foreign-policy decisions simply aren't susceptible to personal favoritism the way EPA regulations are. Question 3: Did John Huang break new ground in exploiting his government office for campaign-fund-raising purposes? Answer: No. The honor here actually goes to Robert Mosbacher, George Bush's secretary of commerce. As Bush's campaign chairman in 1988, Mosbacher invented the Team 100--a designation for the 249 corporate contributors who gave $100,000 or more in soft money to the RNC. When Mosbacher became secretary of commerce, members of the team were rewarded in various ways, including being invited by Mosbacher on trade missions around the world and, often, being given ambassadorships. ("That's part of what the system has been like for 160 years," Mosbacher said when questioned about it at the time--a judgment the press apparently agreed with.) Mosbacher's last act as commerce secretary was a tour of 30 cities to meet with business executives about how he could help them with exports. When he left the department shortly thereafter to run Bush's re-election campaign, he turned to the same executives for contributions. In his own use of the Commerce Department to dun corporations for campaign funds, Ron Brown was Mosbacher's disciple, though he proved to be an even greater talent than his master. As chairman of the DNC in the period leading up to the 1992 election, Brown followed the path laid by Tony Coehlo, the infamous chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Coehlo (as documented in Brooks Jackson's Honest Graft ) was the first to try to compete with the Republicans for corporate soft money. Brown devised for the DNC a "Managing Director" program to match Mosbacher's Republican "Team 100." When Brown became secretary of commerce in 1993, the managing directors were not forgotten. Fifteen DNC staff members went with him to Commerce, and they knew who the new administration's friends were. One of those who went with Brown was Melissa Moss, who took over the Office of Business Liaison at Commerce. This was the office that selected participants for the high-profile trade missions to such places as China and Indonesia, which became the focus of Brown's career at Commerce. On these trips, Brown functioned as a personal trade representative for companies like Boeing and AT&T. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal by a reporter who went along on Brown's China trip, seats on his plane were essentially sold off in exchange for soft-money contributions. John Huang was merely a cog in this machine. When he left the Lippo Group in 1994, Huang became a deputy assistant secretary in the International Trade Administration, the section of the Commerce Department that handles trade issues. Under oath, Huang has claimed he had only a "passive role" in the foreign trade missions--whatever that means. It all . But that's the Commerce Department Mosbacher created, and which Brown perfected. To present the Huang story as something new, reflecting the uniquely severe moral failings of William Jefferson Clinton, is absurd. So if, in fact, both parties are equally implicated in all the categories of campaign-financing sleaze raised by the Lippo case, why is the Indogate scandal such a big story? There are three reasons: reformers, reporters, and Republicans. Reformers are happy to have any good example to illustrate the evils of the system. Reporters are trying to compensate for suggestions that they are biased in favor of the Democrats. And Republicans, who have been the black hats of the campaign business since Watergate, are seizing an opportunity to finally turn the tables. The Republican outrage may be hypocritical, but in another sense, it is sincere. GOP leaders are furious at losing an advantage in corporate fund raising that dates back 100 years, to the election of 1896, when William McKinley's legendary money man Mark Hanna mobilized American business to stop the Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan. In the 1980s, the Republican advantage in total donations was still as high as 5-1 and never less than 3-1. In the 1992 election cycle, however, Ron Brown whittled it down to 3-2, thanks to corporate contributions. In 1996, the Democrats nearly caught up in the chief corporate category: soft money. With the help of Huang and others, they raised $102 million this year--almost as much as the Republicans' $121 million. The way they did it was simple: imitation.

test

40968

He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before.... DESIRE NO MORE by Algis Budrys ( illustrated by Milton Luros ) " Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... " —Chaucer THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head. "But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that." "I've got a trade," he answered. His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly. "I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks. His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle. "A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !" The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little. " Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs. "What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress. "Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!" Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown. "But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...." "Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms. "Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly. "Yes, I'm sure !" "But, where's he going?" " Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?" " Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?" Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs. "Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically. Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen. THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree." "But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?" "I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out. The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?" Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it. The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?" Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer." The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man. The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted: "Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old." "Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar. The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact." "Oh." "Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness. Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket." The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass. "Strictly a specialist, huh?" Ish nodded. "Call it that." "But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?" Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done." The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?" "Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills. THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel. "Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter. "It's only air; nasty old air." The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened. " Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream. "Marty!" Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal. And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!" The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ... "Marty!" ... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently. She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm. "Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry." "LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while." Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot." He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know. "I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before." The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...." Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again. "I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time." All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets." "That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her. A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest. HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him. Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky. She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician. He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her. "But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!" He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him. Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite. "Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm. "Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!" And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her. "SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said. They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go. "How's it?" the FS asked. Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little. "Think you'll make it?" Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out." "Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth. "Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?" "What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it. "Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast." "Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on." The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?" "Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest. MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel. "Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice. Ish nodded. "How's that?" The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit. "Odd jobs, first of all?" "Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops." "Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?" "Ahuh." "Took some of your pay in flying lessons." "Right." MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead. Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it. "No family." Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them." Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements. "How's things between you and the opposite sex?" "About normal." "No wife—no steady girl." "Not a very good idea, in my racket." MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!" Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared. MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives." Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly. "You through with me?" MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry." Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!" "I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did." Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go. Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time. He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now. ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said. "But everybody fills out an application," she protested. "No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour. The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled." "Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back." "But nobody goes back." "Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too.... "Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high. She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly. "No wings," he said. "Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either." "Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly. "It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?" "Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go. "Who do I see?" She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?" "About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time." She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do." "Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him. Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager." "Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan. THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched. "Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!" "I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out." "That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk. The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented." "But hardly usual," he added. Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said. She smiled back. "It happens." He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager. "Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now." "Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?" Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem." The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to." Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course." The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him. "Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?" The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something." Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry." He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?" "Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all." "How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something. "Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing. "Earth," the Personnel Manager said. Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night. He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited. Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades. "It's not the same," he said. The Personnel Manager sighed. "Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets." The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum." Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it." "All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little. "ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder. "Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead." Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold. "Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said. "All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs. Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit. The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing. He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder. He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty. "It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way. MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead. "Ish." It was MacKenzie, bending over him. Ish grunted. "It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there." He was past emotions. "Yeah?" "We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! " "So?" "There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going." He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have." "I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip." "I said it was easy," Ish said. "There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?" "Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. " He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note. This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

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Raiders of the Second Moon By GENE ELLERMAN A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory, and had brought him to this tiny world—to write an end to his first existence. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us. But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by Luna's bulk, we know little. Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk, life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth. In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a sheathed dagger. Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration. Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest, and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had confirmed that belief. For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated them aloud. "New York," he said, "good ol' New York." The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle giant. Noork grinned. "Tako, woman," he greeted her. "Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you hunter or escaped slave?" "A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted narl last night when it attacked you." Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never far from the hilt of her hunting dagger. Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin. "Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes opened yet wider. "Who are you?" "I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for my friend." The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?" "That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?" "Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys." Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply. The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks. "Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will listen to it no more." But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive.... The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers. "And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I alone escaped." Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones. "Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to your city of Grath...." He smiled. The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm, numbing it so he felt nothing for some time. One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with, Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath. Noork At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied with the mud of the trail. Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of the great limb and filled his arms with fruit. A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads vanished. These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him, and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures. And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more. A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath them. His lip curled at what he saw. The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons were two long knives and a club. "So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like this." Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the stains from the dead man's foggy robe. The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the drying fabric of the mantle and donned it. Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy. For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal war. A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath. "You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water will trap you." Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted. "It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?" "I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones can be trapped and skinned." "Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull. "Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman called Sarna." And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake of Uzdon. To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley. But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the golden-skinned girl, was from another world also. The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork, the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and perhaps then he could remember better who he had been. So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end. The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk. The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but Dietrich's spacer had crashed. Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb. Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly blade well. After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's edge. Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of a braided leather rope to the ground beyond. He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull! Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep. "The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant." Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together beneath his tree. "That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than another's." "But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one." The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a good woman—and ugly, my son." "Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake." "Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions, are not unkind. "Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will complete my checking of the gardens." Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back, and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field. "Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden man's rather stupid face intently. "I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke." Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work. "The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die." "If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape from the island I will take you along." Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto. "I will help you, stranger," he agreed. "Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where Tholon Sarna is held." The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work. "Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple pits." "It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well." "If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I talked with you?" Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave. The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at three distinct levels. Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple. Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another of their number. He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the wolf-headed shape a female. These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu! Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to the slaves and common citizens of the island. As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two short swords rose to bar his way. "None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the sacrifice is chosen." Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside. In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his left. His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back. The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully. For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to blood-slippery step. The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more. He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps. In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion of the upper temple was muted to a murmur. So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm. He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes. Noork grinned. From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer here in the artificial light of the flickering torch. Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering. The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl, was held prisoner. The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and toward this Noork made his way. He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna." There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope hide. One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall. "It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike. "The priest," hissed the girl. Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he faced the burly priest of the Skull. Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man. "So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do not trust your guards, then." The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me your face before I kill you!" Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he offered. The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that drew blood from left shoulder to elbow. The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon. The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple, and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his enemy. Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets. Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms. Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders. "Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely. "No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners." Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the new robe. "My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the girl's hand. "Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is given."

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The Girls From Fieu Dayol By ROBERT F. YOUNG They were lovely and quick to learn—and their only faults were little ones! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Up until the moment when he first looked into Hippolyte Adolphe Taine's History of English Literature , Herbert Quidley's penchant for old books had netted him nothing in the way of romance and intrigue. Not that he was a stranger to either. Far from it. But hitherto the background for both had been bedrooms and bars, not libraries. On page 21 of the Taine tome he happened upon a sheet of yellow copy paper folded in four. Unfolding it, he read: asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Sities towms copeis wotnid. Gind snoll doper nckli! Wilbe Fieu Dayol fot ig habe mot toseo knwo—te bijk weil en snoll doper—Klio, asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Since when, Quidley wondered, refolding the paper and putting it back in the book, had high-school typing students taken to reading Taine? Thoughtfully he replaced the book on the shelf and moved deeper into the literature section. He had just taken down Xenophon's Anabasis when he saw the girl walk in the door. Let it be said forthwith that old books were not the only item on Herbert Quidley's penchant-list. He liked old wood, too, and old paintings, not to mention old wine and old whiskey. But most of all he liked young girls. He especially liked them when they looked the way Helen of Troy must have looked when Paris took one gander at her and started building his ladder. This one was tall, with hyacinth hair and liquid blue eyes, and she had a Grecian symmetry of shape that would have made Paris' eyes pop had he been around to take notice. Paris wasn't, but Quidley's eyes, did the job. After coming in the door, the girl deposited a book on the librarian's desk and headed for the literature section. Quickly Quidley lowered his eyes to the Anabasis and henceforth followed her progress out of their corners. When she came to the O's she paused, took down a book and glanced through it. Then she replaced it and moved on to the P's ... the Q's ... the R's. Barely three feet from him she paused again and took down Taine's History of English Literature . He simply could not believe it. The odds against two persons taking an interest in so esoteric a volume on a single night in a single library were ten thousand to one. And yet there was no gainsaying that the volume was in the girl's hands, and that she was riffling through it with the air of a seasoned browser. Presently she returned the book to the shelf, selected another—seemingly at random—and took it over to the librarian's desk. She waited statuesquely while the librarian processed it, then tucked it under her arm and whisked out the door into the misty April night. As soon as she disappeared, Quidley stepped over to the T's and took Taine down once more. Just as he had suspected. The makeshift bookmark was gone. He remembered how the asdf-;lkj exercise had given way to several lines of gibberish and then reappeared again. A camouflaged message? Or was it merely what it appeared to be on the surface—the efforts of an impatient typing student to type before his time? He returned Taine to the shelf. After learning from the librarian that the girl's name was Kay Smith, he went out and got in his hardtop. The name rang a bell. Halfway home he realized why. The typing exercise had contained the word "Cai", and if you pronounced it with hard c, you got "Kai"—or "Kay". Obviously, then, the exercise had been a message, and had been deliberately inserted in a book no average person would dream of borrowing. By whom—her boy friend? Quidley winced. He was allergic to the term. Not that he ever let the presence of a boy friend deter him when he set out to conquer, but because the term itself brought to mind the word "fiance," and the word "fiance" brought to mind still another word, one which repelled him violently. I.e., "marriage". Just the same, he decided to keep Taine's History under observation for a while. Her boy friend turned out to be her girl friend, and her girl friend turned out to be a tall and lissome, lovely with a Helenesque air of her own. From the vantage point of a strategically located reading table, where he was keeping company with his favorite little magazine, The Zeitgeist , Quidley watched her take a seemingly haphazard route to the shelf where Taine's History reposed, take the volume down, surreptitiously slip a folded sheet of yellow paper between its pages and return it to the shelf. After she left he wasted no time in acquainting himself with the second message. It was as unintelligible as the first: asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Cai: Habe wotnid ig ist ending ifedererer te. T'lide sid Fieu Dayol po jestig toseo knwo, bijk weil en snoll doper entling—Yoolna. asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj asdf ;lkj Well, perhaps not quite as unintelligible. He knew, at least, who Cai was, and he knew—from the reappearance of the words wotnid , Fieu Dayol and snoll doper —that the two communications were in the same code. And certainly it was reasonable to assume that the last word— Yoolna —was the name of the girl he had just seen, and that she was a different person from the Klio whose name had appended the first message. He refolded the paper, replaced it between the pages, returned the book to the shelf and went back to the reading table and The Zeitgeist . Kay didn't show up till almost closing time, and he was beginning to think that perhaps she wouldn't come around for the pickup till tomorrow when she finally walked in the door. She employed the same tactics she had employed the previous night, arriving, as though by chance, at the T-section and transferring the message with the same undetectable legerdemain to her purse. This time, when she walked out the door, he was not far behind her. She climbed into a sleek convertible and pulled into the street. It took him but a moment to gain his hardtop and start out after her. When, several blocks later, she pulled to the curb in front of an all-night coffee bar, he followed suit. After that, it was merely a matter of following her inside. He decided on Operation Spill-the-sugar. It had stood him in good stead before, and he was rather fond of it. The procedure was quite simple. First you took note of the position of the sugar dispensers, then you situated yourself so that your intended victim was between you and the nearest one, then you ordered coffee without sugar in a low voice, and after the counterman or countergirl had served you, you waited till he/she was out of earshot and asked your i.v. to please pass the sugar. When she did so you let the dispenser slip from your fingers in such a way that some of its contents spilled on her lap— "I'm terribly sorry," he said, righting it. "Here, let me brush it off." "It's all right, it's only sugar," she said, laughing. "I'm hopelessly clumsy," he continued smoothly, brushing the gleaming crystals from her pleated skirt, noting the clean sweep of her thighs. "I beseech you to forgive me." "You're forgiven," she said, and he noticed then that she spoke with a slight accent. "If you like, you can send it to the cleaners and have them send the bill to me. My address is 61 Park Place." He pulled out his wallet, chose an appropriate card, and handed it to her— Herbert Quidley: Profiliste Her forehead crinkled. " Profiliste? " "I paint profiles with words," he said. "You may have run across some of my pieces in the Better Magazines. I employ a variety of pseudonyms, of course." "How interesting." She pronounced it "anteresting." "Not famous profiles, you understand. Just profiles that strike my fancy." He paused. She had raised her cup to her lips and was taking a dainty sip. "You have a rather striking profile yourself, Miss—" "Smith. Kay Smith." She set the cup back on the counter and turned and faced him. For a second her eyes seemed to expand till they preoccupied his entire vision, till he could see nothing but their disturbingly clear—and suddenly cold—blueness. Panic touched him, then vanished when she said, "Would you really consider word-painting my profile, Mr. Quidley?" Would he! "When can I call?" She hesitated for a moment. Then: "I think it will be better if I call on you. There are quite a number of people living in our—our house. I'm afraid the quarters would be much too cramped for an artist like yourself to concentrate." Quidley glowed. Usually it required two or three days, and sometimes a week, to reach the apartment phase. "Fine," he said. "When can I expect you?" She stood up and he got to his feet beside her. She was even taller than he had thought. In fact, if he hadn't been wearing Cuban heels, she'd have been taller than he was. "I'll be in town night after next," she said. "Will nine o'clock be convenient for you?" "Perfectly." "Good-by for now then, Mr. Quidley." He was so elated that when he arrived at his apartment he actually did try to write a profile. His own, of course. He sat down at his custom-built chrome-trimmed desk, inserted a blank sheet of paper in his custom-built typewriter and tried to arrange his thoughts. But as usual his mind raced ahead of the moment, and he saw the title, Self Profile , nestling noticeably on the contents page of one of the Better Magazines, and presently he saw the piece itself in all its splendid array of colorful rhetoric, sparkling imagery and scintillating wit, occupying a two-page spread. It was some time before he returned to reality, and when he did the first thing that met his eyes was the uncompromisingly blank sheet of paper. Hurriedly he typed out a letter to his father, requesting an advance on his allowance, then, after a tall glass of vintage wine, he went to bed. In telling him that she would be in town two nights hence, Kay had unwittingly apprised him that there would be no exchange of messages until that time, so the next evening he skipped his vigil at the library. The following evening, however, after readying his apartment for the forthcoming assignation, he hied himself to his reading-table post and took up The Zeitgeist once again. He had not thought it possible that there could be a third such woman. And yet there she was, walking in the door, tall and blue-eyed and graceful; dark of hair and noble of mien; browsing in the philosophy section now, now the fiction section, now moving leisurely into the literature aisle and toward the T's.... The camouflage had varied, but the message was typical enough: fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Cai: Gind en snoll doper nckli! Wotnid antwaterer Fieu Dayol hid jestig snoll doper ifedererer te. Dep gogensplo snoll dopers ensing!—Gorka. fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; fdsa jkl; Judging from the repeated use of the words, snoll dopers were the topic of the day. Annoyed, Quidley replaced the message and put the book back on the shelf. Then he returned to his apartment to await Kay. He wondered what her reaction would be if he asked her point-blank what a snoll doper was; whether she would reveal the nature of the amateur secret society to which she and Klio and Yoolna and Gorka belonged. It virtually had to be an amateur secret society. Unless, of course, they were foreigners. But what on earth foreign organization would be quixotic enough to employ Taine's History of English Literature as a communications medium when there was a telephone in every drugstore and a mailbox on every corner? Somehow the words "what on earth foreign organization" got turned around in his mind and became "what foreign organization on earth" and before he could summon his common sense to succor him, he experienced a rather bad moment. By the time the door chimes sounded he was his normal self again. He straightened his tie with nervous fingers, checked to see if his shirt cuffs protruded the proper length from his coat sleeves, and looked around the room to see if everything was in place. Everything was—the typewriter uncovered and centered on the chrome-trimmed desk, with the sheaf of crinkly first-sheets beside it; the reference books stacked imposingly nearby; Harper's , The Atlantic and The Saturday Review showing conspicuously in the magazine rack; the newly opened bottle of bourbon and the two snifter glasses on the sideboard; the small table set cozily for two— The chimes sounded again. He opened the door. She walked in with a demure, "Hello." He took her wrap. When he saw what she was wearing he had to tilt his head back so that his eyes wouldn't fall out of their sockets. Skin, mostly, in the upper regions. White, glowing skin on which her long hair lay like forest pools. As for her dress, it was as though she had fallen forward into immaculate snow, half-burying her breasts before catching herself on her elbows, then turning into a sitting position, the snow clinging to her skin in a glistening veneer; arising finally to her feet, resplendently attired. He went over to the sideboard, picked up the bottle of bourbon. She followed. He set the two snifter glasses side by side and tilted the bottle. "Say when." "When!" "I admire your dress—never saw anything quite like it." "Thank you. The material is something new. Feel it." "It's—it's almost like foam rubber. Cigarette?" "Thanks.... Is something wrong, Mr. Quidley?" "No, of course not. Why?" "Your hands are trembling." "Oh. I'm—I'm afraid it's the present company, Miss Smith." "Call me Kay." They touched glasses: "Your liquor is as exquisite as your living room, Herbert. I shall have to come here more often." "I hope you will, Kay." "Though such conduct, I'm told, is morally reprehensible on the planet Earth." "Not in this particular circle. Your hair is lovely." "Thank you.... You haven't mentioned my perfume yet. Perhaps I'm standing too far away.... There!" "It's—it's as lovely as your hair, Kay." "Um, kiss me again." "I—I never figured—I mean, I engaged a caterer to serve us dinner at 9:30." "Call him up. Make it 10:30." The following evening found Quidley on tenter-hooks. The snoll-doper mystery had acquired a new tang. He could hardly wait till the next message transfer took place. He decided to spend the evening plotting the epic novel which he intended to write someday. He set to work immediately. He plotted mentally, of course—notes were for the hacks and the other commercial non-geniuses who infested the modern literary world. Closing his eyes, he saw the whole vivid panorama of epic action and grand adventure flowing like a mighty and majestic river before his literary vision: the authentic and awe-inspiring background; the hordes of colorful characters; the handsome virile hero, the compelling Helenesque heroine.... God, it was going to be great! The best thing he'd ever done! See, already there was a crowd of book lovers in front of the bookstore, staring into the window where the new Herbert Quidley was on display, trying to force its way into the jammed interior.... Cut to interior. FIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell me quickly, are there any more copies of the new Herbert Quidley left? BOOK CLERK: A few. You don't know how lucky you are to get here before the first printing ran out. FIRST EAGER CUSTOMER: Give me a dozen. I want to make sure that my children and my children's children have a plentiful supply. BOOK CLERK: Sorry. Only one to a customer. Next? SECOND EAGER CUSTOMER: Tell me quickly, are ... there ... any ... more ... copies ... of— ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.... Message no. 4, except for a slight variation in camouflage, ran true to form: a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Cai: Habe te snoll dopers ensing? Wotnid ne Fieu Dayol ist ifederereret, hid jestig snoll doper. Gind ed, olro—Jilka. a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj a;sldkfj Quidley sighed. What, he asked himself, standing in the library aisle and staring at the indecipherable words, was a normal girl like Kay doing in such a childish secret society? From the way she and her correspondents carried on you'd almost think they were Martian girl scouts on an interplanetary camping trip, trying for their merit badges in communications! You could hardly call Kay a girl scout, though. Nevertheless, she was the key figure in the snoll-doper enigma. The fact annoyed him, especially when he considered that a snoll doper , for all he knew, could be anything from a Chinese fortune cooky to an H-bomb. He remembered Kay's odd accent. Was that the way a person would speak English if her own language ran something like " ist ifedereret, hid jestig snoll doper adwo ?" He remembered the way she had looked at him in the coffee bar. He remembered the material of her dress. He remembered how she had come to his room. "I didn't know you had a taste for Taine." Her voice seemed to come from far away, but she was standing right beside him, tall and bewitching; Helenesque as ever. Her blue eyes became great wells into which he found himself falling. With an effort, he pulled himself back. "You're early tonight," he said lamely. She appropriated the message, read it. "Put the book back," she said presently. Then, when he complied: "Come on." "Where are we going?" "I'm going to deliver a snoll doper to Jilka. After that I'm going to take you home to meet my folks." The relieved sigh he heard was his own. They climbed into her convertible and she nosed it into the moving line of cars. "How long have you been reading my mail?" she asked. "Since the night before I met you." "Was that the reason you spilled the sugar?" "Part of the reason," he said. "What's a snoll doper ?" She laughed. "I don't think I'd better tell you just yet." He sighed again. "But if Jilka wanted a snoll doper ," he said after a while, "why in the world didn't she call you up and say so?" "Regulations." She pulled over to the curb in front of a brick apartment building. "This is where Jilka lives. I'll explain when I get back." He watched her get out, walk up the walk to the entrance and let herself in. He leaned his head back on the seat, lit a cigarette and exhaled a mixture of smoke and relief. On the way to meet her folks. So it was just an ordinary secret society after all. And here he'd been thinking that she was the key figure in a Martian plot to blow up Earth— Her folks ! Abruptly the full implication of the words got through to him, and he sat bolt-up-right on the seat. He was starting to climb out of the car when he saw Kay coming down the walk. Anyway, running away wouldn't solve his problem. A complete disappearing act was in order, and a complete disappearing act would take time. Meanwhile he would play along with her. A station wagon came up behind them, slowed, and matched its speed with theirs. "Someone's following us," Quidley said. "Probably Jilka." Five minutes later the station wagon turned down a side street and disappeared. "She's no longer with us," Quidley said. "She's got to pick someone up. She'll meet us later." "At your folks'?" "At the ship." The city was thinning out around them now, and a few stars were visible in the night sky. Quidley watched them thoughtfully for a while. Then: "What ship?" he said. "The one we're going to Fieu Dayol on." " Fieu Dayol? " "Persei 17 to you. I said I was going to take you home to meet my folks, didn't I?" "In other words, you're kidnapping me." She shook her head vehemently. "I most certainly am not! Neither according to interstellar law or your own. When you compromised me, you made yourself liable in the eyes of both." "But why pick on me? There must be plenty of men on Fieu Dayol . Why don't you marry one of them?" "For two reasons: one, you're the particular man who compromised me. Two, there are not plenty of men on Fieu Dayol . Our race is identical to yours in everything except population-balance between the sexes. At periodic intervals the women on Fieu Dayol so greatly outnumber the men that those of us who are temperamentally and emotionally unfitted to become spinsters have to look for wotnids —or mates—on other worlds. It's quite legal and quite respectable. As a matter of fact, we even have schools specializing in alien cultures to expedite our activities. Our biggest problem is the Interstellar statute forbidding us the use of local communications services and forbidding us to appear in public places. It was devised to facilitate the prosecution of interstellar black marketeers, but we're subject to it, too, and have to contrive communications systems of our own." "But why were all the messages addressed to you?" "They weren't messages. They were requisitions. I'm the ship's stock girl." April fields stretched darkly away on either side of the highway. Presently she turned down a rutted road between two of them and they bounced and swayed back to a black blur of trees. "Here we are," she said. Gradually he made out the sphere. It blended so flawlessly with its background that he wouldn't have been able to see it at all if he hadn't been informed of its existence. A gangplank sloped down from an open lock and came to rest just within the fringe of the trees. Lights danced in the darkness behind them as another car jounced down the rutted road. "Jilka," Kay said. "I wonder if she got him." Apparently she had. At least there was a man with her—a rather woebegone, wilted creature who didn't even look up as they passed. Quidley watched them ascend the gangplank, the man in the lead, and disappear into the ship. "Next," Kay said. Quidley shook his head. "You're not taking me to another planet!" She opened her purse and pulled out a small metallic object "A little while ago you asked me what a snoll doper was," she said. "Unfortunately interstellar law severely limits us in our choice of marriageable males, and we can take only those who refuse to conform to the sexual mores of their own societies." She did something to the object that caused it to extend itself into a long, tubular affair. " This is a snoll doper ." She prodded his ribs. "March," she said. He marched. Halfway up the plank he glanced back over his shoulder for a better look at the object pressed against his back. It bore a striking resemblance to a shotgun.

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61397

THE FACES OUTSIDE BY BRUCE McALLISTER They were all that was left of humanity—if they were still human! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I wanted to call her Soft Breast, because she is soft when I hold her to me. But the Voice told me to call her Diane. When I call her Diane, I have a pleasant feeling, and she seems closer to me. She likes the name "Diane". The Voice knew what was best, of course, as it always does. I must mate with her every day, when the water is brightest. The Voice says so. It also says that I am in a "tank", and that the water is brightest when the "sun" is over the "tank". I do not understand the meaning of "sun", but the Voice says that "noon" is when the "Sun" is over the "tank". I must mate with Diane every "noon". I do know what the "tank" is. It is a very large thing filled with water, and having four "corners", one of which is the Cave where Diane and I sleep when the water is black like the ink of the squid and cold like dead fish. But we stay warm. There is the "floor" of the "tank", the "floor" being where all the rock and seaweed is, with all the crawling fish and crabs, where Diane and I walk and sleep. There are four "sides". "Sides" are smooth and blue walls, and have "view-ports"—round, transparent areas—on them. The Voice says that the things in the "view-ports" are Faces. I have a face, as does Diane. But the cracked, flat things with small lights circling about them are not pretty like Diane's face. The Voice says that the Faces have bodies, like myself, and Diane. No body could be like Diane's. I think I should be quite sick if I saw the bodies of the Faces. The Voice then says that the Faces are watching us, as we sometimes watch the porpoises. It took a very long time to grow used to having the Faces watch us, as Diane and I came together, but we learned to do it as simply as we swim and sleep. But Diane does not have babies. I am very sad when I see the porpoises and whales with their young. Diane and I sleep together in the Cave; Diane is very warm and soft. We sleep in happiness, but when we are awake, we are lonely. I question the Voice about a baby for Diane, but the Voice is always silent. I grow to hate the Faces in the "view-ports". They are always watching, watching. The Voice says that they are enemies, and bad. The Faces have not tried to hurt me: but I must think of them as enemies because the Voice says so. I ask bad, like the shark? The Voice says, no, worse than the sharks and eels. It says that the Faces are evil. The "tank" must be high, because the water is high. I have gone once to the surface, and, although I could get used to it, the light was too much for my eyes. It took me two hundred and seventy kicks to the surface; it took me three thousand steps from our Cave to the opposite "side". The "tank" is very large, otherwise the whales would not be happy. The fish are many, but the dangers are few. I have seen the sharks kill. But the shark does not come near me if I see it and am afraid. Sometimes I have caught it sneaking up behind me, but when I turn it leaves quickly. I have questioned the Voice about why the sharks leave. It does not know. It has no one to ask. Today the "sun" must be very large, or powerful, or bright, because the water is brighter than most days. When I awoke Diane was not beside me. The rock of the Cave is jagged, so as I make my way from our bed of cool and slick seaweed, toward the entrance, I scrape my leg on the fifth kick. Not much blood comes from the cut. That is fortunate, because when there is blood the sharks come. Diane has grabbed the tail of a porpoise, and both are playing. Diane and I love the porpoises. Sometimes we can even hear their thoughts. They are different from the other fish; they are more like us. But they have babies and we do not. Diane sees me and, wanting to play, swims behind a rock and looks back, beckoning. I make a grab at her as I sneak around the rock. But she darts upward, toward the surface, where her body is a shadow of beauty against the lighter water above her. I follow her, but she ducks and I sail past her. Diane pulls up her legs, knees under her chin, and puts her arms around them. She then drops like a rock toward the "floor". I have caught a porpoise by his top fin. He knows my wish, so he speeds toward Diane, circles her and butts her soft thighs with his snout. She laughs, but continues to stay in a ball, her black hair waving. She is very beautiful. I try to pry her arms from around her legs gently, but she resists. I must use force. Diane does not mind when I do; because she knows I love her. I pull her arms away, and slip my arms under hers, kissing her on the lips for a long time. Struggling to free herself, laughing again, she pokes me sharply with her elbow and escapes my arms. I am surprised. She quickly puts her arms around my neck, pulls herself to my back and links her slim legs around my middle. She is pretending that I am a porpoise. I laugh. She pinches me to go ahead. I swim upward, but her thoughts tell me she wants to go to the Cave. I understand. I carry her through the water very slowly, feeling the warmth and nipples of her breasts pressed against my back as she rests her head on my shoulder and smiles. The Faces continue to stare. Many times I have searched for a word to show my hatred for them. I shall find it somehow, though. Sooner or later. "What count of planets had the Terrans infested?" The furry humanoid leaned over the desk and stared, unblinking, at the lesser humanoid in the only other chair in the room. His gaze was dropped as he scratched informally at the heavy fur at his wrist. He raised his gaze again. "Forty-three is the count, beush ," replied the other. "And the count of planets destroyed?" "Forty-three planetoid missiles were sent and detonated simultaneously without resistance or losses on our part, beush ," the assistant beush answered indirectly. The room was hot, so the beush lazily passed his hand over a faintly glowing panel. The room was cooled, and a large-eyed female with silky, ochrous fur—very desirable to the majority of humanoids—entered with two flared glasses of an odorless, transparent liquid—very desirable to the majority of humanoids. The lesser humanoid was being treated exceptionately well. The room was momentarily silent as the two sipped at their drinks with black lips. The beush , as customary, spoke first. "Inform me of the pre-espionage intelligence accomplishments contra-Energi. I have not been previously informed. Do not spare the details." "Of certainty, beush ," began the assistant with all the grace of an informer. "The Light and Force Research of the Energi is executed in one center of one planet, the planet being Energa, as our intelligence service has conveniently listed it. The Energi have negative necessity for secrecy in their Light and Force Research, because, first, all centers are crusted and protected by Force Domes. Second, it is near impossibility that one could so self-disguise that he would negatively be detectable." He hesitated. "And these Energi," queried the beush , "are semi-telepathic or empathic?" "Affirmative," the assistant mumbled. "Then you have there a third reason," offered the beush . "Graces be given you, beush ." The beush nodded in approval. "Continue, but negatively hesitate frequently or it will be necessary to discuss this subject post-present." His assistant trembled slightly. "Unequivocally affirmative. Beush , your memory relates that five periods ante-present, when there existed the Truce inter Energi, Terrans and ourselves, there was a certain period during which gifts of the three nucleus-planets were exchanged in friendship. The Terrans were self-contented to donate to the Energi an immense 'aquarium'—an 'aquarium' consisting of a partly transparent cell in which was placed a collection of Terran life-forms that breathed their oxygen from the dense atmosphere of Terran seas. But, as a warpspace message from the Terran Council indirectly proclaimed, the degenerate Terrans negatively possessed a ship of any Space type large or powerful enough to transport the 'aquarium' to Energa. Our ships being the largest of the Truce, we were petitioned by the Terrans to transport it. These events developed before the Terrans grew pestiferous to our cause. We obliged, but even our vastest ship was slow, because the physical power necessary to bring the weight of the cell through warpspace quickly was too great for the solitary four generators. It was imperative that the trip be on a longer trajectory arranged through norm-space. During the duration of the trip, feelings of suspicion arose inter Three Truce Races. As your memory also relates, the 'aquarium' was still in space when we found it necessary to obliterate the total race of Terrans. The message of the annihilation arrived in retard to the Energi, so Time permitted us to devise a contra-Energi intelligence plan, a necessity since it was realized that the Energi would be disturbed by our action contra-Terrans and would, without doubt, take action contra-ourselves. "Unknown to you, beush , or to the masses and highers, an insignificant pleasure craft was extracted from Terran Space and negatively consumed with a planet when the bombs were detonated. The ship accommodated two Terrans. Proper Terrans by birth, negatively by reference. One was male, other female. The two had been in their culture socially and religiously united in a ceremony called 'matrimony'. Emotions of sex, protection and an emotion we have negatively been able to analyze linked the two, and made them ideal for our purpose." The assistant looked at the beush , picked up his partially full glass and, before he could sip it, was dashed to the floor beside the beush himself. The former helped the higher to his unstable legs, and was commented to by the same, "Assistant, proceed to the protecroom." They entered the well-illuminated closet and immediately slipped into the unwieldy metallic suits. Once again they took their seats, the beush reflecting and saying, "As your memory relates, that explosion was a bomb-drop concussion from the Rebellers. We must now wear anti-radiation protection. For that reason, and the danger of the Energi, you do see why we need the formulae of the Force Domes, immediately ." There was menace in his voice. The assistant trembled violently. Using the rare smile of that humanoid race, the beush continued, "Do negatively self-preoccupy. Resume your information, if contented." "Contented," came the automatic reply, and the assistant began, "The two humans were perfect for the Plan, I repeat. Before the Energi received the message of the race destruction, it was imperative that we establish an agent on Energa, near the Force Domes. We assumed that the 'aquarium' would be placed on Energa, in the greatest center. That was correct, but negatively yet knowing for certainty, we perpetuated the Plan, with the 'aquarium' as the basis. "One of our most competent protoplasmic computers stabilized the final steps of the Plan. We were to subject the two Terrans to radiation and have as a result two Terrans who could breathe their normal oxygen form H2O—the atmosphere of the 'aquarium', I repeat. We were then to deprive them of memory, except of the inter-attracting emotions, to allow them to live in harmony. Thirdly, we were to place them in the 'aquarium' and have them forwarded under the reference of semi-intelligent aqua-beings from Terran seas. A simple, but quite effective plan, your opinion, beush ?" "Quite," was the reply. "And concerning the method of info-interception?" The assistant continued without hesitation, embarrassed by his incompetency, "A hyper-complex spheroid with radio interceptors, a-matter viewers and recorders and the general intelligence instruments of micro-size was placed in the cranium of the male mutant. The spheroid has negative direct control over the organism. Size was too scarce for use on trivialities. Then an agent was placed behind the larger controls at our end of the instruments." "And you are the agent?" "Hyper-contentedly affirmative." I have done two things today. I have found the word for my hatred of the Faces. The Voice gave it to me. When I asked the Voice, it laughed and told me the word to use was "damn". So today I have thrice said, "Damn the Faces. Damn them." Diane and I have decided that we want a baby. Maybe the other fish wanted them, so they got them. We want a baby. "The two Terrans were so biologically mutated and are so nearly robotic, that it is physically impossible for reproduction on their part, beush ." The beush ignored the assistant's words and said, "I have received copies of the thought-patterns and translations. There was something strange and very powerful about the meaning of the male's thought, 'want'. I query." "Be assured without preoccupation that there exists negative danger of reproduction." The name I wanted to call Diane was not good, because her breasts are hard and large, as is her stomach. I think she is sick. I do not think Diane is sick. I think she is going to have a baby. "Entities, assistant! On your oath-body you proclaimed that there is negative danger of reproduction." "Rest assured, peace, beush . "But his thoughts!" "Rest assured, higher beush ." There is much blood in the water today. Diane is having a baby; sharks have come. I have never seen so many sharks, and as big as they are I have never seen. I am afraid, but still some sneak among us near Diane. We love the porpoises, so they help us now. They are chasing the sharks away, injuring and killing some. "Entities, Warpspaced Entities! There has been reproduction." " Yorbeush ," cried the assistant in defense. "It is physically impossible. But they are mutants. It is negatively impossible that they possess Mind Force to a degree." "To what degree? What degree could produce reproduction when it is physically impossible?" The beush was sarcastic. "How far can they go?" "There is negatively great amount they can do. Negative danger, because we have studied their instincts and emotions and found that they will not leave the 'aquarium,' their 'home'. Unless someone tells them to, but there is no one to do so." Today I damned the Faces nine times and finally wanted them to go away. The "view-ports" went black. It was like the sharks leaving when I wanted them to. I still do not understand. There has been much useless noise and senseless talk from the Voice these days. It is annoying because I must concentrate on loving Diane and caring for the baby. So I wanted the Voice to leave it. It left. "Entities Be Simply Damned! The spheroid ceased to exist, assistant. How far can they go, assistant?" The beush rose, screamed hysterically for three seconds and then fired the hand weapon point blank at the neck of his assistant. The sharks come today, because Diane is having another baby. Diane hurts, and there is more blood than last time. Her face is not pretty when she hurts, as it is pretty when she sleeps. So I want her to sleep. Her face is pretty now with the smile on her lips. "Fourteen thousand Energi ceased to exist, spheroid ceased to exist, and another reproduction. Warpspace! How far will they go?" It has been hundreds of days. Faces keep appearing, but I continue to want them to go away. Diane has had eighteen babies. The oldest are swimming around and playing with the porpoises. Diane and I spend most of the time teaching the children by showing them things, and by giving them our thoughts by touching them. Today I found that none of the children have Voices. I could want them to have Voices, but the children's thoughts tell me that it is not right to have a Voice. The eldest boy says that we should leave the tank, that a greater "tank" is around us, and that it is easier to move around in that greater tank. He also says that we must guard ourselves against Faces outside. That is strange, but the boy is a good boy. Many times he knows that things will happen before they do. He is a good boy. He is almost as tall as I am. The eldest girl is pretty like Diane, her body very white and soft but, since I wanted it so, her hair is golden, instead of dark. The boy likes her very much, and I have seen them together, touching. Tomorrow I will explain to him that if he wants something, he will get it. So he must want a baby. "Query? The Energi will bomb-drop the 'aquarium'? War declared against us? War declared? Entities be wholly damned! Negative! Negativvv!" The disintegrator was fired once more, this time into the orange eye of the beush himself, by himself, and for the good of himself. When, if I ever do want the Voice to come back, it will be very surprised to know that Diane has had twenty-four babies; that the three eldest boys have mated twice, once and twice, and have had four babies. The Voice will also be surprised to know that it took all twenty-nine of us to want all the Faces around the tank to die, as the eldest boy said to do. We could not tell, but the boy said that six million Faces were dead. That seems impossible to me, but the boy is always right. Tomorrow we are leaving the tank. We will want to leave it; it is getting crowded. The boy says that beyond the greater tank, which we will also leave, there is enough space for all the babies Diane could have if she lived forever. Forever, he said. It would be nice to live forever. I think I'll want ....

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61243

THE SNOWBANK ORBIT BY FRITZ LEIBER Earth could not stop the Enemy's remorseless advance from outer space. Neither could the Enemy! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The pole stars of the other planets cluster around Polaris and Octans, but Uranus spins on a snobbishly different axis between Aldebaran and Antares. The Bull is her coronet and the Scorpion her footstool. Dear blowzy old bitch-planet, swollen and pale and cold, mad with your Shakespearean moons, white-mottled as death from Venerean Plague, spinning on your side like a poisoned pregnant cockroach, rolling around the sun like a fat drunken floozie with green hair rolling on the black floor of an infinite bar-room, what a sweet last view of the Solar System you are for a cleancut young spaceman.... Grunfeld chopped off that train of thought short. He was young and the First Interstellar War had snatched him up and now it was going to pitch him and twenty other Joes out of the System on a fast curve breaking around Uranus—and so what! He shivered to get a little heat and then applied himself to the occulted star he was tracking through Prospero's bridge telescope. The star was a twentieth planetary diameter into Uranus, the crosslines showed—a glint almost lost in pale green. That meant its light was bulleting 1600 miles deep through the seventh planet's thick hydrogen atmosphere, unless he were seeing the star on a mirage trajectory—and at least its depth agreed with the time since rim contact. At 2000 miles he lost it. That should mean 2000 miles plus of hydrogen soup above the methane ocean, an America-wide layer of gaseous gunk for the captain to play the mad hero in with the fleet. Grunfeld didn't think the captain wanted to play the mad hero. The captain hadn't gone space-simple in any obvious way like Croker and Ness. And he wasn't, like Jackson, a telepathy-racked visionary entranced by the Enemy. Worry and responsibility had turned the captain's face into a skull which floated in Grunfeld's imagination when he wasn't actually seeing it, but the tired eyes deep-sunk in the dark sockets were still cool and perhaps sane. But because of the worry the captain always wanted to have the last bit of fact bearing on the least likely maneuver, and two pieces of evidence were better than one. Grunfeld found the next sizable star due to occult. Five-six minutes to rim contact. He floated back a foot from the telescope, stretching out his thin body in the plane of the ecliptic—strange how he automatically assumed that orientation in free fall! He blinked and blinked, then rested his eyes on the same planet he'd been straining them on. The pale greenish bulk of Uranus was centered in the big bridge spaceshield against the black velvet dark and bayonet-bright stars, a water-splotched and faded chartreuse tennis ball on the diamond-spiked bed of night. At eight million miles she looked half the width of Luna seen from Earth. Her whitish equatorial bands went from bottom to top, where, Grunfeld knew, they were spinning out of sight at three miles a second—a gelid waterfall that he imagined tugging at him with ghostly green gangrenous fingers and pulling him over into a hydrogen Niagara. Half as wide as Luna. But in a day she'd overflow the port as they whipped past her on a near miss and in another day she'd be as small as this again, but behind them, sunward, having altered their outward course by some small and as yet unpredictable angle, but no more able to slow Prospero and her sister ships or turn them back at their 100 miles a second than the fleet's solar jets could operate at this chilly distance from Sol. G'by, fleet. G'by, C.C.Y. spaceman. Grunfeld looked for the pale planet's moons. Miranda and Umbriel were too tiny to make disks, but he distinguished Ariel four diameters above the planet and Oberon a dozen below. Spectral sequins. If the fleet were going to get a radio signal from any of them, it would have to be Titania, occulted now by the planet and the noisy natural static of her roiling hydrogen air and seething methane seas—but it had always been only a faint hope that there were survivors from the First Uranus Expedition. Grunfeld relaxed his neck and let his gaze drift down across the curving star-bordered forward edge of Prospero's huge mirror and the thin jutting beams of the port lattice arm to the dim red-lit gages below the spaceshield. Forward Skin Temperature seven degrees Kelvin. Almost low enough for helium to crawl, if you had some helium. Prospero's insulation, originally designed to hold out solar heat, was doing a fair job in reverse. Aft (sunward) Skin Temperature 75 degrees Kelvin. Close to that of Uranus' sun-lit face. Check. Cabin Temperature 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Brr! The Captain was a miser with the chem fuel remaining. And rightly ... if it were right to drag out life as long as possible in the empty icebox beyond Uranus. Gravities of Acceleration zero. Many other zeros. The four telltales for the fleet unblinkingly glowed dimmest blue—one each for Caliban , Snug , Moth , and Starveling , following Prospero in line astern on slave automatic—though for months inertia had done all five ships' piloting. Once the buttons had been green, but they'd wiped that color off the boards because of the Enemy. The gages still showed their last maximums. Skin 793 Kelvin, Cabin 144 Fahrenheit, Gravs 3.2. All of them hit almost a year ago, when they'd been ace-ing past the sun. Grunfeld's gaze edged back to the five bulbous pressure suits, once more rigidly upright in their braced racks, that they'd been wearing during that stretch of acceleration inside the orbit of Mercury. He started. For a moment he'd thought he saw the dark-circled eyes of the captain peering between two of the bulging black suits. Nerves! The captain had to be in his cabin, readying alternate piloting programs for Copperhead. Suddenly Grunfeld jerked his face back toward the spaceshield—so violently that his body began very slowly to spin in the opposite direction. This time he'd thought he saw the Enemy's green flashing near the margin of the planet—bright green, viridian, far vivider than that of Uranus herself. He drew himself to the telescope and feverishly studied the area. Nothing at all. Nerves again. If the Enemy were much nearer than a light-minute, Jackson would esp it and give warning. The next star was still three minutes from rim contact. Grunfeld's mind retreated to the circumstances that had brought Prospero (then only Mercury One ) out here. II When the First Interstellar War erupted, the pioneer fleets of Earth's nations had barely pushed their explorations beyond the orbit of Saturn. Except for the vessels of the International Meteor Guard, spaceflight was still a military enterprise of America, Russia, England and the other mega-powers. During the first months the advantage lay wholly with the slim black cruisers of the Enemy, who had an antigravity which allowed them to hover near planets without going into orbit; and a frightening degree of control over light itself. Indeed, their principal weapon was a tight beam of visible light, a dense photonic stiletto with an effective range of several Jupiter-diameters in vacuum. They also used visible light, in the green band, for communication as men use radio, sometimes broadcasting it and sometimes beaming it loosely in strange abstract pictures that seemed part of their language. Their gravity-immune ships moved by reaction to photonic jets the tightness of which rendered them invisible except near the sun, where they tended to ionize electronically dirty volumes of space. It was probably this effective invisibility, based on light-control, which allowed them to penetrate the Solar System as deep as Earth's orbit undetected, rather than any power of travel in time or sub-space, as was first assumed. Earthmen could only guess at the physical appearance of the Enemy, since no prisoners were taken on either side. Despite his impressive maneuverability and armament, the Enemy was oddly timid about attacking live planets. He showed no fear of the big gas planets, in fact hovering very close to their turgid surfaces, as if having some way of fueling from them. Near Terra the first tactic of the black cruisers, after destroying Lunostrovok and Circumluna, was to hover behind the moon, as though sharing its tide-lockedness—a circumstance that led to a sortie by Earth's Combined Fleet, England and Sweden excepted. At the wholly disastrous Battle of the Far Side, which was visible in part to naked-eye viewers on Earth, the Combined Fleet was annihilated. No Enemy ship was captured, boarded, or seriously damaged—except for one which, apparently by a fluke, was struck by a fission-headed anti-missile and proceeded after the blast to "burn," meaning that it suffered a slow and puzzling disintegration, accompanied by a dazzling rainbow display of visible radiation. This was before the "stupidity" of the Enemy with regard to small atomic missiles was noted, or their allergy to certain radio wave bands, and also before Terran telepaths began to claim cloudy contact with Enemy minds. Following Far Side, the Enemy burst into activity, harrying Terran spacecraft as far as Mercury and Saturn, though still showing great caution in maneuver and making no direct attacks on planets. It was as if a race of heavily armed marine creatures should sink all ocean-going ships or drive them to harbor, but make no assaults beyond the shore line. For a full year Earth, though her groundside and satellite rocketyards were furiously busy, had no vehicle in deep space—with one exception. At the onset of the War a fleet of five mobile bases of the U. S. Space Force were in Orbit to Mercury, where it was intended they take up satellite positions prior to the prospecting and mineral exploitation of the small sun-blasted planet. These five ships, each with a skeleton five-man crew, were essentially Ross-Smith space stations with a solar drive, assembled in space and intended solely for space-to-space flight inside Earth's orbit. A huge paraboloid mirror, its diameter four times the length of the ship's hull, superheated at its focus the hydrogen which was ejected as a plasma at high exhaust velocity. Each ship likewise mounted versatile radio-radar equipment on dual lattice arms and carried as ship's launch a two-man chemical fuel rocket adaptable as a fusion-headed torpedo. After Far Side, this "tin can" fleet was ordered to bypass Mercury and, tacking on the sun, shape an orbit for Uranus, chiefly because that remote planet, making its 84-year circuit of Sol, was currently on the opposite side of the sun to the four inner planets and the two nearer gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. In the empty regions of space the relatively defenseless fleet might escape the attention of the Enemy. However, while still accelerating into the sun for maximum boost, the fleet received information that two Enemy cruisers were in pursuit. The five ships cracked on all possible speed, drawing on the solar drive's high efficiency near the sun and expending all their hydrogen and most material capable of being vaporized, including some of the light-metal hydrogen storage tanks—like an old steamer burning her cabin furniture and the cabins themselves to win a race. Gradually the curving course that would have taken years to reach the outer planet flattened into a hyperbola that would make the journey in 200 days. In the asteroid belt the pursuing cruisers turned aside to join in the crucial Battle of the Trojans with Earth's largely new-built, more heavily and wisely armed Combined Fleet—a battle that proved to be only a prelude to the decisive Battle of Jupiter. Meanwhile the five-ship fleet sped onward, its solar drive quite useless in this twilight region even if it could have scraped together the needed boilable ejectant mass to slow its flight. Weeks became months. The ships were renamed for the planet they were aimed at. At least the fleet's trajectory had been truly set. Almost on collision course it neared Uranus, a mystery-cored ball of frigid gas 32,000 miles wide coasting through space across the fleet's course at a lazy four miles a second. At this time the fleet was traveling at 100 miles a second. Beyond Uranus lay only the interstellar night, into which the fleet would inevitably vanish.... Unless, Grunfeld told himself ... unless the fleet shed its velocity by ramming the gaseous bulk of Uranus. This idea of atmospheric braking on a grand scale had sounded possible at first suggestion, half a year ago—a little like a man falling off a mountain or from a plane and saving his life by dropping into a great thickness of feathery new-fallen snow. Supposing her solar jet worked out here and she had the reaction mass, Prospero could have shed her present velocity in five hours, decelerating at a comfortable one G. But allowing her 12,000 miles of straight-line travel through Uranus' frigid soupy atmosphere—and that might be dipping very close to the methane seas blanketing the planet's hypothetical mineral core— Prospero would have two minutes in which to shed her velocity. Two minutes—at 150 Gs. Men had stood 40 and 50 Gs for a fractional second. But for two minutes.... Grunfeld told himself that the only surer way to die would be to run into a section of the Enemy fleet. According to one calculation the ship's skin would melt by heat of friction in 90 seconds, despite the low temperature of the abrading atmosphere. The star Grunfeld had been waiting for touched the hazy rim of Uranus. He drifted back to the eyepiece and began to follow it in as the pale planet's hydrogen muted its diamond brilliance. III In the aft cabin, lank hairy-wristed Croker pinned another blanket around black Jackson as the latter shivered in his trance. Then Croker turned on a small light at the head of the hammock. "Captain won't like that," plump pale Ness observed tranquilly from where he floated in womb position across the cabin. "Enemy can feel a candle of our light, captain says, ten million miles away." He rocked his elbows for warmth and his body wobbled in reaction like a polly-wog's. "And Jackson hears the Enemy think ... and Heimdall hears the grass grow," Croker commented with a harsh manic laugh. "Isn't an Enemy for a billion miles, Ness." He launched aft from the hammock. "We haven't spotted their green since Saturn orbit. There's nowhere for them." "There's the far side of Uranus," Ness pointed out. "That's less than ten million miles now. Eight. A bare day. They could be there." "Yes, waiting to bushwack us as we whip past on our way to eternity," Croker chuckled as he crumpled up against the aft port, shedding momentum. "That's likely, isn't it, when they didn't have time for us back in the Belt?" He scowled at the tiny white sun, no bigger a disk than Venus, but still with one hundred times as much light as the full moon pouring from it—too much light to look at comfortably. He began to button the inner cover over the port. "Don't do that," Ness objected without conviction. "There's not much heat in it but there's some." He hugged his elbows and shivered. "I don't remember being warm since Mars orbit." "The sun gets on my nerves," Croker said. "It's like looking at an arc light through a pinhole. It's like a high, high jail light in a cold concrete yard. The stars are highlights on the barbed wire." He continued to button out the sun. "You ever in jail?" Ness asked. Croker grinned. With the tropism of a fish, Ness began to paddle toward the little light at the head of Jackson's hammock, flicking his hands from the wrists like flippers. "I got one thing against the sun," he said quietly. "It's blanketing out the radio. I'd like us to get one more message from Earth. We haven't tried rigging our mirror to catch radio waves. I'd like to hear how we won the battle of Jupiter." "If we won it," Croker said. "Our telescopes show no more green around Jove," Ness reminded him. "We counted 27 rainbows of Enemy cruisers 'burning.' Captain verified the count." "Repeat: if we won it." Croker pushed off and drifted back toward the hammock. "If there was a real victory message they'd push it through, even if the sun's in the way and it takes three hours to catch us. People who win, shout." Ness shrugged as he paddled. "One way or the other, we should be getting the news soon from Titania station," he said. "They'll have heard." "If they're still alive and there ever was a Titania Station," Croker amended, backing air violently to stop himself as he neared the hammock. "Look, Ness, we know that the First Uranus Expedition arrived. At least they set off their flares. But that was three years before the War and we haven't any idea of what's happened to them since and if they ever managed to set up housekeeping on Titania—or Ariel or Oberon or even Miranda or Umbriel. At least if they built a station that could raise Earth I haven't been told. Sure thing Prospero hasn't heard anything ... and we're getting close." "I won't argue," Ness said. "Even if we raise 'em, it'll just be hello-goodby with maybe time between for a battle report." "And a football score and a short letter from home, ten seconds per man as the station fades." Croker frowned and added, "If Captain had cottoned to my idea, two of us at any rate could have got off this express train at Uranus." "Tell me how," Ness asked drily. "How? Why, one of the ship's launches. Replace the fusion-head with the cabin. Put all the chem fuel in the tanks instead of divvying it between the ship and the launch." "I haven't got the brain for math Copperhead has, but I can subtract," Ness said, referring to Prospero's piloting robot. "Fully fueled, one of the launches has a max velocity change in free-fall of 30 miles per second. Use it all in braking and you've only taken 30 from 100. The launch is still going past Uranus and out of the system at 70 miles a second." "You didn't hear all my idea," Croker said. "You put piggyback tanks on your launch and top them off with the fuel from the other four launches. Then you've 100 miles of braking and a maneuvering reserve. You only need to shed 90 miles, anyway. Ten miles a second's the close circum-Uranian velocity. Go into circum-Uranian orbit and wait for Titania to send their jeep to pick you up. Have to start the maneuver four hours this side of Uranus, though. Take that long at 1 G to shed it." "Cute," Ness conceded. "Especially the jeep. But I'm glad just the same we've got 70 per cent of our chem fuel in our ships' tanks instead of the launches. We're on such a bull's eye course for Uranus—Copperhead really pulled a miracle plotting our orbit—that we may need a sidewise shove to miss her. If we slapped into that cold hydrogen soup at our 100 mps—" Croker shrugged. "We still could have dropped a couple of us," he said. "Captain's got to look after the whole fleet," Ness said. "You're beginning to agitate, Croker, like you was Grunfeld—or the captain himself." "But if Titania Station's alive, a couple of men dropped off would do the fleet some good. Stir Titania up to punch a message through to Earth and get a really high-speed retrieve-and-rescue ship started out after us. If we've won the War." "But Titania Station's dead or never was, not to mention its jeep. And we've lost the Battle of Jupiter. You said so yourself," Ness asserted owlishly. "Captain's got to look after the whole fleet." "Yeah, so he kills himself fretting and the rest of us die of old age in the outskirts of the Solar System. Join the Space Force and See the Stars! Ness, do you know how long it'd take us to reach the nearest star—except we aren't headed for her—at our 100 mps? Eight thousand years!" "That's a lot of time to kill," Ness said. "Let's play chess." Jackson sighed and they both looked quickly at the dark unlined face above the cocoon, but the lips did not flutter again, or the eyelids. Croker said, "Suppose he knows what the Enemy looks like?" "I suppose," Ness said. "When he talks about them it's as if he was their interpreter. How about the chess?" "Suits. Knight to King Bishop Three." "Hmm. Knight to King Knight Two, Third Floor." "Hey, I meant flat chess, not three-D," Croker objected. "That thin old game? Why, I no sooner start to get the position really visualized in my head than the game's over." "I don't want to start a game of three-D with Uranus only 18 hours away." Jackson stirred in his hammock. His lips worked. "They...." he breathed. Croker and Ness instantly watched him. "They...." "I wonder if he is really inside the Enemy's mind?" Ness said. "He thinks he speaks for them," Croker replied and the next instant felt a warning touch on his arm and looked sideways and saw dark-circled eyes in a skull-angular face under a battered cap with a tarnished sunburst. Damn, thought Croker, how does the captain always know when Jackson's going to talk? "They are waiting for us on the other side of Uranus," Jackson breathed. His lips trembled into a smile and his voice grew a little louder, though his eyes stayed shut. "They're welcoming us, they're our brothers." The smile died. "But they know they got to kill us, they know we got to die." The hammock with its tight-swathed form began to move past Croker and he snatched at it. The captain had pushed off from him for the hatch leading forward. Grunfeld was losing the new star at 2200 miles into Uranus when he saw the two viridian flares flashing between it and the rim. Each flash was circled by a fleeting bright green ring, like a mist halo. He thought he'd be afraid when he saw that green again, but what he felt was a jolt of excitement that made him grin. With it came a touch on his shoulder. He thought, the captain always knows. "Ambush," he said. "At least two cruisers." He yielded the eyepiece to the captain. Even without the telescope he could see those incredibly brilliant green flickers. He asked himself if the Enemy was already gunning for the fleet through Uranus. The blue telltales for Caliban and Starveling began to blink. "They've seen it too," the captain said. He snatched up the mike and his next words rang through the Prospero . "Rig ship for the snowbank orbit! Snowbank orbit with stinger! Mr. Grunfeld, raise the fleet." Aft, Croker muttered, "Rig our shrouds, don't he mean? Rig shrouds and firecrackers mounted on Fourth of July rockets." Ness said, "Cheer up. Even the longest strategic withdrawal in history has to end some time." IV Three quarters of a day later Grunfeld felt a spasm of futile fear and revolt as the pressure suit closed like a thick-fleshed carnivorous plant on his drugged and tired body. Relax, he told himself. Fine thing if you cooked up a fuss when even Croker didn't. He thought of forty things to re-check. Relax, he repeated—the work's over; all that matters is in Copperhead's memory tanks now, or will be as soon as the captain's suited up. The suit held Grunfeld erect, his arms at his sides—the best attitude, except he was still facing forward, for taking high G, providing the ship herself didn't start to tumble. Only the cheekpieces and visor hadn't closed in on his face—translucent hand-thick petals as yet unfolded. He felt the delicate firm pressure of built-in fingertips monitoring his pulses and against his buttocks the cold smooth muzzles of the jet hypodermics that would feed him metronomic drugs during the high-G stretch and stimulants when they were in free-fall again. When. He could swing his head and eyes just enough to make out the suits of Croker and Ness to either side of him and their profiles wavy through the jutting misty cheekpieces. Ahead to the left was Jackson—just the back of his suit, like a black snowman standing at attention, pale-olive-edged by the great glow of Uranus. And to the right the captain, his legs suited but his upper body still bent out to the side as he checked the monitor of his suit with its glowing blue button and the manual controls that would lie under his hands during the maneuver. Beyond the captain was the spaceshield, the lower quarter of it still blackness and stars, but the upper three-quarters filled with the onrushing planet's pale mottled green that now had the dulled richness of watered silk. They were so close that the rim hardly showed curvature. The atmosphere must have a steep gradient, Grunfeld thought, or they'd already be feeling decel. That stuff ahead looked more like water than any kind of air. It bothered him that the captain was still half out of his suit. There should be action and shouted commands, Grunfeld thought, to fill up these last tight-stretched minutes. Last orders to the fleet, port covers being cranked shut, someone doing a countdown on the firing of their torpedo. But the last message had gone to the fleet minutes ago. Its robot pilots were set to follow Prospero and imitate, nothing else. And all the rest was up to Copperhead. Still.... Grunfeld wet his lips. "Captain," he said hesitantly. "Captain?" "Thank you, Grunfeld." He caught the edge of the skull's answering grin. "We are beginning to hit hydrogen," the quiet voice went on. "Forward skin temperature's up to 9 K." Beyond the friendly skull, a great patch of the rim of Uranus flared bright green. As if that final stimulus had been needed, Jackson began to talk dreamily from his suit. "They're still welcoming us and grieving for us. I begin to get it a little more now. Their ship's one thing and they're another. Their ship is frightened to death of us. It hates us and the only thing it knows to do is to kill us. They can't stop it, they're even less than passengers...." The captain was in his suit now. Grunfeld sensed a faint throbbing and felt a rush of cold air. The cabin refrigeration system had started up, carrying cabin heat to the lattice arms. Intended to protect them from solar heat, it would now do what it could against the heat of friction. The straight edge of Uranus was getting hazier. Even the fainter stars shone through, spangling it. A bell jangled and the pale green segment narrowed as the steel meteor panels began to close in front of the spaceshield. Soon there was only a narrow vertical ribbon of green— bright green as it narrowed to a thread—then for a few seconds only blackness except for the dim red and blue beads and semi-circles, just beyond the captain, of the board. Then the muted interior cabin lights glowed on. Jackson droned: "They and their ships come from very far away, from the edge. If this is the continuum, they come from the ... discontinuum, where they don't have stars but something else and where gravity is different. Their ships came from the edge on a gust of fear with the other ships, and our brothers came with it though they didn't want to...." And now Grunfeld thought he began to feel it—the first faint thrill, less than a cobweb's tug, of weight . The cabin wall moved sideways. Grunfeld's suit had begun to revolve slowly on a vertical axis. For a moment he glimpsed Jackson's dark profile—all five suits were revolving in their framework. They locked into position when the men in them were facing aft. Now at least retinas wouldn't pull forward at high-G decel, or spines crush through thorax and abdomen. The cabin air was cold on Grunfeld's forehead. And now he was sure he felt weight—maybe five pounds of it. Suddenly aft was up . It was as if he were lying on his back on the spaceshield. A sudden snarling roar came through his suit from the beams bracing it. He lost weight, then regained it and a little more besides. He realized it was their torpedo taking off, to skim by Uranus in the top of the atmosphere and then curve inward the little their chem fuel would let them, homing toward the Enemy. He imaged its tiny red jet over the great gray-green glowing plain. Four more would be taking off from the other ships—the fleet's feeble sting. Like a bee's, just one, in dying. The cheekpieces and foreheadpiece of Grunfeld's suit began to close on his face like layers of pliable ice. Jackson called faintly, " Now I understand. Their ship—" His voice was cut off. Grunfeld's ice-mask was tight shut. He felt a small surge of vigor as the suit took over his breathing and sent his lungs a gush of high-oxy air. Then came a tingling numbness as the suit field went on, adding an extra prop against decel to each molecule of his body. But the weight was growing. He was on the moon now ... now on Mars ... now back on Earth.... The weight was stifling now, crushing—a hill of invisible sand. Grunfeld saw a black pillow hanging in the cabin above him aft. It had red fringe around it. It grew. There was a whistling and shaking. Everything lurched torturingly, the ship's jets roared, everything recovered, or didn't. The black pillow came down on him, crushing out sight, crushing out thought. The universe was a black tingling, a limitless ache floating in a larger black infinity. Something drew back and there was a dry fiery wind on numb humps and ridges—the cabin air on his face, Grunfeld decided, then shivered and started at the thought that he was alive and in free-fall. His body didn't feel like a mass of internal hemorrhages. Or did it? He spun slowly. It stopped. Dizziness? Or the suits revolving forward again? If they'd actually come through— There was a creaking and cracking. The ship contracting after frictional heating? There was a faint stink like ammonia and formaldehyde mixed. A few Uranian molecules forced past plates racked by turbulence? He saw dim red specks. The board? Or last flickers from ruined retinas? A bell jangled. He waited, but he saw nothing. Blind? Or the meteor guard jammed? No wonder if it were. No wonder if the cabin lights were broken. The hot air that had dried his sweaty face rushed down the front of his body. Needles of pain pierced him as he slumped forward out of the top of his opening suit. Then he saw the horizontal band of stars outlining the top of the spaceshield and below it the great field of inky black, barely convex upward, that must , he realized, be the dark side of Uranus . Pain ignored, Grunfeld pushed himself forward out of his suit and pulled himself past the captain's to the spaceshield. The view stayed the same, though broadening out: stars above, a curve-edged velvet black plain below. They were orbiting. A pulsing, color-changing glow from somewhere showed him twisted stumps of the radio lattices. There was no sign of the mirror at all. It must have been torn away, or vaporized completely, in the fiery turbulence of decel. New maxs showed on the board: Cabin Temperature 214 F, Skin Temperature 907 K, Gravs 87. Then in the top of the spacefield, almost out of vision, Grunfeld saw the source of the pulsing glow: two sharp-ended ovals flickering brightly all colors against the pale starfields, like two dead fish phosphorescing. "The torps got to 'em," Croker said, pushed forward beside Grunfeld to the right. "I did find out at the end," Jackson said quietly from the left, his voice at last free of the trance-tone. "The Enemy ships weren't ships at all. They were (there's no other word for it) space animals. We've always thought life was a prerogative of planets, that space was inorganic. But you can walk miles through the desert or sail leagues through the sea before you notice life and I guess space is the same. Anyway the Enemy was (what else can I call 'em?) space-whales. Inertialess space-whales from the discontinuum. Space-whales that ate hydrogen (that's the only way I know to say it) and spat light to move and fight. The ones I talked to, our brothers, were just their parasites." "That's crazy," Grunfeld said. "All of it. A child's picture." "Sure it is," Jackson agreed. From beyond Jackson, Ness, punching buttons, said, "Quiet." The radio came on thin and wailing with static: "Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep and can orbit in to you. The two Enemy are dead—the last in the System. Titania Station calling fleet. We have jeep fueled and set to go—" Fleet? thought Grunfeld. He turned back to the board. The first and last blue telltales still glowed for Caliban and Starveling . Breathe a prayer, he thought, for Moth and Snug . Something else shone on the board, something Grunfeld knew had to be wrong. Three little words: SHIP ON MANUAL. The black rim of Uranus ahead suddenly brightened along its length, which was very slightly bowed, like a section of a giant new moon. A bead formed toward the center, brightened, and then all at once the jail-yard sun had risen and was glaring coldly through its pinhole into their eyes. They looked away from it. Grunfeld turned around. The austere light showed the captain still in his pressure suit, only the head fallen out forward, hiding the skull features. Studying the monitor box of the captain's suit, Grunfeld saw it was set to inject the captain with power stimulants as soon as the Gravs began to slacken from their max. He realized who had done the impossible job of piloting them out of Uranus. But the button on the monitor, that should have glowed blue, was as dark as those of Moth and Snug . Grunfeld thought, now he can rest.

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He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!... The Holes and John Smith By Edward W. Ludwig Illustration by Kelly Freas It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place: "A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience." Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert. We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth: "The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury." But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent. Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur. "Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home. I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute." Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather. "Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked. I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled. "But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?" Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek." Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here." "Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now." Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon. "Five meenutes!" he shrieked. "Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away. We waited. Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale. "Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—" "Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head. "Using what for fare?" I asked. "Your brains?" Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too." The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano. Then it happened. From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass. The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face. His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty. The bass thumped down upon the bandstand. "Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan." A moment's silence. "Your plan?" I echoed at last. "How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already. Hummm, I thought. My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South. "We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering. "Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?" "I know everything ," said John Smith. I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths. And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro. Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then— My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet. The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard. First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles. But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string. I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm. I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus. We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan . We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle. "If I didn't hear it," I gasped, "I wouldn't believe it!" "And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk. "Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one." I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle. "Isn't right for what?" I had to ask. He turned his sad eyes to me. "For going home," he said. Hummm, I thought. We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing. But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment. "Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front." Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?" John Smith nodded. "Unusual." Hummm, I thought again. Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?" He pointed. "Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages." "Even there," he said softly, "even there...." There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana. It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play. Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo. At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?" He shook his head. "Then maybe a Venusian fizz?" His grunt was negative. "Then some old-fashioned beer?" He smiled. "Yes, I like beer." I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool. "John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night." John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan." "Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot." He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration. "I don't know," he finally drawled. "It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef, 'copter landing—if we ever get a 'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages." His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor. He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue: "No, I don't ... care much ... about playing." "What do you like to do, John?" His string-bean of a body stiffened. "I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan." Oh Lord, that plan again! I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting." He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand." Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat. "Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe." "Holes?" I kept a straight face. "Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!" I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat. His voice trembled with emotion. "Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—" "But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?" He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence. "What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!" I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?" He was speaking rapidly again now. "I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through." I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?" "Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited." His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it." "Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one." He nodded. "But it can't be too far away." "I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—" "Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand." Thank heaven! Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells. John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes. Goon-Face was still cautious. "Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?" "Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him." "Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract." "Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli." Just a few minutes later tragedy struck. A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes. "This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed. "I—I'm scared. "Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity." We watched. John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook. John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble. John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly. The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously. John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly. "He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!" I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—" We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon. "He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole." I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you." "We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration. "We're going to make a more scientific approach." "How?" John asked. Fat Boy gulped. "Just wait another day," I said. "We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work." "No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow." All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what? Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life. It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment. John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying. "John!" I cried. "You're drunk!" His watery eyes squinted at me. "No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!" "But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory." His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter." "Then what is it, John?" "It's my body. It's—" "Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?" His face was white with terror. "No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?" He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation. I patted him gingerly on the arm. "Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now." We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I. I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street. Then—he was gone. John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit. "—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it." John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed.... Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract." Without John, we're notes in a lost chord. We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith. Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy. And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city. ... THE END

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Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. THE VALLEY By Richard Stockham Illustrated by Ed Emsh If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener. The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish. Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun. The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!" Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!" The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship. "I can't tell them," said the man. "Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?" The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!" "Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder." A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship." "They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—." He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here." He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over." "No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them." "We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation." She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael." He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in." The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away. The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight. A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff. And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end. Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence. A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet. The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas. And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back. The silence did not change. The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?" A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it. Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials. "Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!" "We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael. "A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be." The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands. "There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !" Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship. They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square. The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof." Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance. Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons. The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being. Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions. Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship. They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible. And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth. The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes. The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space. Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships. And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness. Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea. At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume. Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...." Lights flashed through the room and the picture died. Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling. "There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years." Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you." "Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility." "I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for." "What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria." "But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space." "We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it." The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away. "And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life." "The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?" "None." "Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?" Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President." There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again. "We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people." Michael and Mary were silent. "You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on, "until we have reached our decision." As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains. In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight. Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea. "We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space." "You could probably still go," she said quietly. He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you." She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away." He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?" "I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison." "But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice." "Maybe they'll have to give us a choice." "What're you talking about?" "They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age." He waited. "They can't stand the sight of people dying violently." Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket. "These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice." He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?" He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?" "Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this." He waited, frowning, watching her intently. "I'm—going to have a child." His face went blank. Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full. "No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it." "It's true." He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside. "Yes, I can see it is." "I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael." He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible." "Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this." "Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done." "No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could." "And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see." They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him. They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen: "This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right." Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie." Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands. "What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room." "I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again." Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now. And then there was the sound of the door opening. They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers. Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders. The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet. The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one. "Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness, "we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society." He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?" "Yes, there is." "Proceed." Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat. "Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure." The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks. "We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces. "If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born." "Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see." The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still. Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle. Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them. Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death. "Stop!" he said quietly. They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back. "If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you." The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror. "I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!" "We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves." "You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you." "We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!" The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?" Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death." The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...." There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached. Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again." "We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies." "A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes." "You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains." "There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!" Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor. It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road. Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation. "If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?" "I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison." She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road. "How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?" "All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself." "Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?" He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness. They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust. "I'm getting out," she said. "I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?" They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill. "The air smells clean," he said. "The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did. "Take off your boots, Michael. Try it." Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back." "Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop. He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?" "I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream." He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet." "I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities." He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly: "Mary!" She stopped, whirling around. He was staring down at her feet. She followed his gaze. "It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades." She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades. "They're new," he said. They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object. He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center. "Oh!" Her hand found his. They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside. Mary knelt down and drank from the spring. "It's so cool. It must come from deep down." "It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down." "We can live here, Michael!" Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child." "Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!" "And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them." They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own. There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house. ... THE END

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TERROR OUT OF SPACE by LEIGH BRACKETT An eerie story of a silver land beneath the black Venusian seas. A grim tale of brooding terror whirling out of space to drive men mad, of a menace without name or form, and of the man, Lundy, who fought the horror, his eyes blinded by his will. For to see the terror was to become its slave—a mindless automaton whose only wish was to see behind the shadowed mysterious eyelids of " IT ". [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Lundy was flying the aero-space convertible by himself. He'd been doing it for a long time. So long that the bottom half of him was dead to the toes and the top half even deader, except for two separate aches like ulcerated teeth; one in his back, one in his head. Thick pearly-grey Venusian sky went past the speeding flier in streamers of torn cloud. The rockets throbbed and pounded. Instruments jerked erratically under the swirl of magnetic currents that makes the Venusian atmosphere such a swell place for pilots to go nuts in. Jackie Smith was still out cold in the co-pilot's seat. From in back, beyond the closed door to the tiny inner cabin, Lundy could hear Farrell screaming and fighting. He'd been screaming a long time. Ever since the shot of avertin Lundy had given him after he was taken had begun to wear thin. Fighting the straps and screaming, a hoarse jarring sound with no sense in it. Screaming to be free, because of It . Somewhere inside of Lundy, inside the rumpled, sweat-soaked black uniform of the Tri-World Police, Special Branch, and the five-foot-six of thick springy muscle under it, there was a knot. It was a large knot, and it was very, very cold in spite of the sweltering heat in the cabin, and it had a nasty habit of yanking itself tight every few minutes, causing Lundy to jerk and sweat as though he'd been spiked. Lundy didn't like that cold tight knot in his belly. It meant he was afraid. He'd been afraid before, plenty of times, and he wasn't ashamed of it. But right now he needed all the brains and guts he had to get It back to Special headquarters at Vhia, and he didn't want to have to fight himself, too. Fear can screw things for you. It can make you weak when you need to be strong, if you're going to go on living. You, and the two other guys depending on you. Lundy hoped he could keep from getting too much afraid, and too tired—because It was sitting back there in its little strongbox in the safe, waiting for somebody to crack. Farrell was cracked wide open, of course, but he was tied down. Jackie Smith had begun to show signs before he passed out, so that Lundy had kept one hand over the anaesthetic needle gun holstered on the side of his chair. And Lundy thought, The hell of it is, you don't know when It starts to work on you. There's no set pattern, or if there is we don't know it. Maybe right now the readings I see on those dials aren't there at all.... Down below the torn grey clouds he could see occasional small patches of ocean. The black, still, tideless water of Venus, that covers so many secrets of the planet's past. It didn't help Lundy any. It could be right or wrong, depending on what part of the ocean it was—and there was no way to tell. He hoped nothing would happen to the motors. A guy could get awfully wet, out in the middle of that still black water. Farrell went on screaming. His throat seemed to be lined with impervium. Screaming and fighting the straps, because It was locked up and calling for help. Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, and opened his pale green eyes. "I'm cold," he said. "Hi, Midget." Lundy turned his head. Normally he had a round, fresh, merry face, with bright dark eyes and a white, small-boyish grin. Now he looked like something the waiter had swept out from under a table at four A.M. on New Year's Day. "You're cold," he said sourly. He licked sweat off his lips. "Oh, fine! That was all I needed." Jackie Smith stirred slightly, groaned, to joggle himself. His black tunic was open over his chest, showing the white strapping of bandages, and his left hand was thrust in over the locked top of the tunic's zipper. He was a big man, not any older than Lundy, with big, ugly, pleasant features, a shock of coarse pale hair, and a skin like old leather. "On Mercury, where I was born," he said, "the climate is suitable for human beings. You Old-World pantywaists...." He broke off, turned white under the leathery burn, and said through set teeth, "Oi! Farrell sure did a good job on me." "You'll live," said Lundy. He tried not to think about how nearly both he and Smith had come to not living. Farrell had put up one hell of a fight, when they caught up with him in a native village high up in the Mountains of White Cloud. Lundy still felt sick about that. The bull-meat, the hard boys, you didn't mind kicking around. But Farrell wasn't that kind. He was just a nice guy that got trapped by something too big for him. A nice guy, crazy blind in love with somebody that didn't exist. A decent hard-working guy with a wife and two kids who'd lost his mind, heart, and soul to a Thing from outer space, so that he was willing to kill to protect It. Oh, hell! thought Lundy wearily, won't he ever stop screaming? The rockets beat and thundered. The torn grey sky whipped past. Jackie Smith sat rigid, with closed eyes, white around the lips and breathing in shallow, careful gasps. And Vhia was still a long way off. Maybe farther off than he knew. Maybe he wasn't heading toward Vhia at all. Maybe It was working on him, and he'd never know it till he crashed. The cold knot tightened in his belly like a cold blade stabbing. Lundy cursed. Thinking things like that was a sure way to punch your ticket right straight to blazes. But you couldn't help thinking, about It . The Thing you had caught in a special net of tight-woven metal mesh, aiming at something Farrell could see but you couldn't. The Thing you had forced into the glassite box and covered up with a black cloth, because you had been warned not to look at It . Lundy's hands tingled and burned, not unpleasantly. He could still feel the small savage Thing fighting him, hidden in the net. It had felt vaguely cylindrical, and terribly alive. Life. Life from outer space, swept out of a cloud of cosmic dust by the gravitic pull of Venus. Since Venus had hit the cloud there had been a wave of strange madness on the planet. Madness like Farrell's, that had led to murder, and some things even worse. Scientists had some ideas about that life from Out There. They'd had a lucky break and found one of The Things, dead, and there were vague stories going around of a crystalline-appearing substance that wasn't really crystal, about three inches long and magnificently etched and fluted, and supplied with some odd little gadgets nobody would venture an opinion about. But the Thing didn't do them much good, dead. They had to have one alive, if they were going to find out what made it tick and learn how to put a stop to what the telecommentators had chosen to call The Madness from Beyond, or The Vampire Lure. One thing about it everybody knew. The guys who suddenly went sluggy and charged off the rails all made it clear that they had met the ultimate Dream Woman of all women and all dreams. Nobody else could see her, but that didn't bother them any. They saw her, and she was— She . And her eyes were always veiled. And She was a whiz at hypnosis and mind-control. That's why She , or It , hadn't been caught alive before. Not before Lundy and Smith, with every scientific aid Special could give them, had tracked down Farrell and managed to get the breaks. The breaks. Plain fool luck. Lundy moved his throbbing head stiffly on his aching neck, blinked sweat out of his bloodshot eyes, and wished to hell he was home in bed. Jackie Smith said suddenly, "Midget, I'm cold. Get me a blanket." Lundy looked at him. His pale green eyes were half open, but not as though they saw anything. He was shivering. "I can't leave the controls, Jackie." "Nuts. I've got one hand. I can hang onto this lousy tin fish that long." Lundy scowled. He knew Smith wasn't kidding about the cold. The temperatures on Mercury made the first-generation colonists sensitive to anything below the range of an electric furnace. With the wound and all, Smith might, wind up with pneumonia if he wasn't covered. "Okay." Lundy reached out and closed the switch marked A. "But I'll let Mike do the flying. He can probably last five minutes before he blows his guts out." Iron Mike was just a pattycake when it came to Venusian atmosphere flying. The constant magnetic compensation heated the robot coils to the fusing point in practically no time at all. Lundy thought fleetingly that it was nice to know there were still a couple of things men could do better than machinery. He got up, feeling like something that had stood outside rusting for four hundred years or so. Smith didn't turn his head. Lundy growled at him. "Next time, sonny, you wear your long woolen undies and let me alone!" Then he stopped. The knot jerked tight in his stomach. Cold sweat needled him, and his nerves stung in a swift rush of fire. Farrell had quit screaming. There was silence in the ship. Nothing touched it. The rockets were outside it and didn't matter. Even Jackie Smith's careful breathing had stopped. Lundy went forward slowly, toward the door. Two steps. It opened. Lundy stopped again, quite still. Farrell was standing in the opening. A nice guy with a wife and two kids. His face still looked like that, but the eyes in it were not sane, nor even human. Lundy had tied him down to the bunk with four heavy straps. Breast, belly, thighs, and feet. The marks of them were on Farrell. They were cut into his shirt and pants, into his flesh and sinew, deep enough to show his bare white ribs. There was blood. A lot of blood. Farrell didn't mind. "I broke the straps," he said. He smiled at Lundy. "She called me and I broke the straps." He started to walk to the safe in the corner of the cabin. Lundy gagged and pulled himself up out of a cold black cloud and got his feet to moving. Jackie Smith said quietly, "Hold it, Midget. She doesn't like it there in the safe. She's cold, and she wants to come out." Lundy looked over his shoulder. Smith was hunched around in his seat, holding the needle-gun from Lundy's holster on the pilot's chair. His pale green eyes had a distant, dreamy glow, but Lundy knew better than to trust it. He said, without inflection, "You've seen her." "No. No, but—I've heard her." Smith's heavy lips twitched and parted. The breath sucked through between them, hoarse and slow. Farrell went down on his knees beside the safe. He put his hands on its blank and gleaming face and turned to Lundy. He was crying. "Open it. You've got to open it. She wants to come out. She's frightened." Jackie Smith raised the gun, a fraction of an inch. "Open it, Midget," he whispered. "She's cold in there." Lundy stood still. The sweat ran on him and he was colder than a frog's belly in the rain; and for no reason at all he said thickly, "No. She's hot. She can't breathe in there. She's hot." Then he jerked his head up and yelled. He came around to face Smith, unsteady but fast, and started for him. Smith's ugly face twisted as though he might be going to cry. "Midget! I don't want to shoot you. Open the safe!" Lundy said, "You damned fool," with no voice at all, and went on. Smith hit the firing stud. The anaesthetic needles hit Lundy across the chest. They didn't hurt much. Just a stinging prick. He kept going. No reason. It was just something he seemed to be doing at the time. Behind him Farrell whimpered once like a puppy and lay down across the little safe. He didn't move again. Lundy got down on his hands and knees and reached in a vague sort of way for the controls. Jackie Smith watched him with dazed green eyes. Quite suddenly, Iron Mike blew his guts out. The control panel let go a burst of blue flame. The glare and heat of it knocked Lundy backward. Things hissed and snarled and ran together, and the convertible began to dance like a leaf in a gale. The automatic safety cut the rockets dead. The ship began to fall. Smith said something that sounded like She and folded up in his chair. Lundy rubbed his hand across his face. The lines of it were blurred and stupid. His dark eyes had no sense in them. He began to crawl over the lurching floor toward the safe. The clouds outside ripped and tore across the ship's nose, and presently only water showed. Black, still, tideless water dotted with little islands of floating weed that stirred and slithered with a life of their own. Black water, rushing up. Lundy didn't care. He crawled through Farrell's blood, and he didn't care about that, either. He pushed Farrell's body back against the cabin wall and began to scratch at the shiny door, making noises like a hound shut out and not happy about it. The ship hit the water with a terrific smack. Spray geysered up, dead white against the black sea, fell back, and closed in. Presently even the ripples went away. Dark green weed-islands twined sinuously upon themselves, a flock of small sea-dragons flapped their jeweled wings down and began to fish, and none of them cared at all about the ship sinking away under them. Not even Lundy cared, out cold in the space-tight cabin, with his body wedged up against the safe and tears drying with the sweat on his stubbled cheeks. II The first thing Lundy knew about was the stillness. A dead feeling, as though everything in creation had stopped breathing. The second thing was his body. It hurt like hell, and it was hot, and it didn't like the thick, foul air it was getting. Lundy pushed himself into a sitting position and tried to boot his brain into action. It was hard work, because someone had split his head open four ways with an axe. It wasn't really dark in the cabin. A wavering silver glow almost like moonlight came in through the ports. Lundy could see pretty well. He could see Farrell's body sprawled out on the floor, and a mess of junk that had once been equipment. He could see the safe. He looked at it a long time. There wasn't much to look at. Just an open safe with nothing in it, and a piece of black cloth dropped on the floor. "Oh, Lord," whispered Lundy. "Oh, my Lord!" Everything hit him at once then. There wasn't much in him but his stomach, and that was tied down. But it tried hard to come up. Presently the spasms stopped, and then Lundy heard the knocking. It wasn't very loud. It had a slow, easy rhythm, as though the knocker had a lot of time and didn't care when he got in. It came from the airlock panel. Lundy got up. Slowly, cold as a toad's belly and as white. His lips drew back from his teeth and stayed there, frozen. The knocking kept on. A sleepy kind of sound. The guy outside could afford to wait. Sometime that locked door was going to open, and he could wait. He wasn't in a hurry. He would never be in a hurry. Lundy looked all around the cabin. He didn't speak. He looked sideways out of the port. There was water out there. The black sea-water of Venus; clear and black, like deep night. There was level sand spreading away from the ship. The silver light came up out of it. Some kind of phosphorescence, as bright as moonlight and faintly tinged with green. Black sea-water. Silver sand. The guy kept on knocking at the door. Slow and easy. Patient. One—two. One—two. Just off beat with Lundy's heart. Lundy went to the inner cabin, walking steadily. He looked around carefully and then went back. He stopped by the lock panel. "Okay, Jackie," he said. "In a minute. In a minute, boy." Then he turned and went very fast to the port locker and got a quart bottle out of its shock cradle, and raised it. It took both hands. After a while he dropped the bottle and stood still, not looking at anything, until he stopped shaking. Then he pulled his vac-suit down off its hook and climbed into it. His face was grey and quite blank. He took all the oxygen cylinders he could carry, emergency rations, and all the benzedrine in the medicine kit. He put the limit dose of the stimulant down on top of the brandy before he locked his helmet. He didn't bother with the needle gun. He took the two Service blasters—his own, and Smith's. The gentle knocking didn't stop. He stood for a moment looking at the open safe and the black cloth dropped beside it. Something cruel came into his face. A tightness, a twitching and setting of the muscles, and a terrible look of patience. Being under water wouldn't bother a Thing from outer space. He reached up and lifted the net of tight-woven metal-mesh down off its hook and fastened it on his belt. Then he walked over and opened the airlock door. Black water swirled in around his weighted boots, and then the door opened wide and Jackie Smith came in. He'd been waiting in the flooded lock chamber. Kicking his boots against the inner door, easy, with the slow breathing of the sea. Now the water pushed his feet down and held him upright from behind, so he could walk in and stand looking at Lundy. A big blond man with green eyes, and white bandages strapped under his open black tunic, looking at Lundy. Not long. Only for a second. But long enough. Lundy stopped himself after the third scream. He had to, because he knew if he screamed again he'd never stop. By that time the black water had pushed Jackie Smith away, over to the opposite wall, and covered his face. "Oh, Lord," whispered Lundy. "Oh Lord, what did he see before he drowned ?" No one answered. The black water pushed at Lundy, rising high around him, trying to take him over to Jackie Smith. Lundy's mouth began to twitch. He shut his teeth on his lower lip, holding it, holding his throat. He began to run, clumsily, fighting the water, and then he stopped that, too. He walked, not looking behind him, out into the flooded lock. The door slid shut behind him, automatically. He walked out across the firm green-silver sand, swallowing the blood that ran in his mouth and choked him. He didn't hurry. He was going to be walking for a long, long time. From the position of the ship when it fell he ought to be able to make it to the coast—unless It had been working on him so the figures on the dials hadn't been there at all. He checked his direction, adjusted the pressure-control in his vac-suit, and plodded on in the eerie undersea moonlight. It wasn't hard going. If he didn't hit a deep somewhere, or meet something too big to handle, or furnish a meal for some species of hungry Venus-weed, he ought to live to face up to the Old Man at H.Q. and tell him two men were dead, the ship lost, and the job messed to hell and gone. It was beautiful down there. Like the dream-worlds you see when you're doped or delirious. The phosphorescence rose up into the black water and danced there in wavering whorls of cold fire. Fish, queer gaudy little things with jewelled eyes, flicked past Lundy in darts of sudden color, and there were great stands of weed like young forests, spangling the dark water and the phosphorescent glow with huge burning spots of blue and purple and green and silver. Flowers. Lundy got too close to some of them once. They reached out and opened round mouths full of spines and sucked at him hungrily. The fish gave them a wide berth. After that, so did Lundy. He hadn't been walking more than half an hour when he hit the road. It was a perfectly good road, running straight across the sand. Here and there it was cracked, with some of the huge square blocks pushed up or tipped aside, but it was still a good road, going somewhere. Lundy stood looking at it with cold prickles running up and down his spine. He'd heard about things like this. Nobody knew an awful lot about Venus yet. It was a young, tough, be-damned-to-you planet, and it was apt to give the snoopy scientific guys a good swift boot in their store teeth. But even a young planet has a long past, and stories get around. Legends, songs, folk tales. It was pretty well accepted that a lot of Venus that was under water now hadn't been once, and vice versa. The old girl had her little whimsies while doing the preliminary mock-up of her permanent face. So once upon a time this road had crossed a plain under a hot pearl-grey sky, going somewhere. Taking caravans from the seacoast, probably. Bales of spices and spider-silk and casks of vakhi from the Nahali canebrakes, and silver-haired slave-girls from the high lands of the Cloud People, going along under sultry green liha -trees to be sold. Now it crossed a plain of glowing sand under still black water. The only trees that shadowed it were tall weeds with brilliant, hungry flowers, and the only creatures that followed it were little fish with jewelled eyes. But it was still there, still ready, still going somewhere. It was headed the same way Lundy was. It must have made a bend somewhere and turned to meet him. Lundy licked cold sweat off his lips and stepped out on it. He stepped slow and careful, like a man coming alone down the aisle of an empty church. He walked on the road for a long time. The weeds crowded in thicker along its edges. It seemed to run right through a dense forest of them that spread away as far as Lundy could see on either side. He was glad of the road. It was wide, and if he stayed in the middle of it the flowers couldn't reach him. It got darker, because of the weeds covering the sand. Whatever made the phosphorescence didn't like being crowded that way, and pretty soon it was so dark that Lundy had to switch on the light in the top of his helmet. In the edges of the beam he could see the weed fronds moving lazily with the slow breathing of the sea. The flowers were brighter here. They hung like lamps in the black water, burning with a light that seemed to come out of themselves. Sullen reds and angry yellows, and coldly vicious blues. Lundy didn't like them. The weeds grew in thicker and closer. They bulged out from their roots, in over the stone edges. The flowers opened their bright hungry mouths and yearned at Lundy, reaching. Reaching. Not quite touching. Not yet. He was tired. The brandy and the benzedrine began to die in him. He changed his oxygen cylinder. That helped, but not much. He took more dope, but he was afraid to go heavy on it lest he drive his heart too hard. His legs turned numb. He hadn't slept for a long time. Tracking Farrell hadn't been any breeze, and taking him—and It —had been plain and fancy hell. Lundy was only human. He was tired. Bushed. Cooked. Beat to the socks. He sat down and rested a while, turning off his light to save the battery. The flowers watched him, glowing in the dark. He closed his eyes, but he could still feel them, watching and waiting. After a minute or two he got up and went on. The weeds grew thicker, and taller, and heavier with flowers. More benzedrine, and damn the heart. The helmet light cut a cold white tunnel through the blackness. He followed it, walking faster. Weed fronds met and interlaced high above him, closing him in. Flowers bent inward, downward. Their petals almost brushed him. Fleshy petals, hungry and alive. He started to run, over the wheel-ruts and the worn hollows of the road that still went somewhere, under the black sea. Lundy ran clumsily for a long time between the dark and pressing walls. The flowers got closer. They got close enough to catch his vac-suit, like hands grasping and slipping and grasping again. He began using the blaster. He burned off a lot of them that way. They didn't like it. They began swaying in from their roots and down from the laced ceiling over his head. They hurt. They were angry. Lundy ran, sobbing without tears. The road did him in. It crossed him up, suddenly, without warning. It ran along smoothly under the tunnel of weeds, and then it was a broken, jumbled mass of huge stone blocks, tipped up and thrown around like something a giant's kid got tired of playing with. And the weeds had found places to stand in between them. Lundy tripped and fell, cracking his head against the back of his helmet. For a moment all he could see was bright light flashing. Then that stopped, and he realized he must have jarred a connection loose somewhere because his own light was out. He began to crawl over a great tilted block. The flowers burned bright in the darkness. Bright and close. Very close. Lundy opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a hoarse animal whimper. He was still holding the blaster. He fired it off a couple of times, and then he was on top of the block, lying flat on his belly. He knew it was the end of the line, because he couldn't move any more. The bright flowers came down through the dark. Lundy lay watching them. His face was quite blank. His dark eyes held a stubborn hatred, but nothing else. He watched the flowers fasten on his vac-suit and start working. Then, from up ahead, through the dark close tunnel of the weeds, he saw the light. It flared out suddenly, like lightning. A sheet of hot, bright gold cracking out like a whipped banner, lighting the end of the road. Lighting the city, and the little procession coming out of it. Lundy didn't believe any of it. He was half dead already, with his mind floating free of his body and beginning to be wrapped up in dark clouds. He watched what he saw incuriously. The golden light died down, and then flared out twice more, rhythmically. The road ran smooth again beyond the end of the tunnel, straight across a narrow plain. Beyond that, the city rose. Lundy couldn't see much of it, because of the weeds. But it seemed to be a big city. There was a wall around it, of green marble veined with dusky rose, the edges worn round by centuries of water. There were broad gates of pure untarnished gold, standing open on golden pintles. Beyond them was a vast square paved in cloud-grey quartz, and the buildings rose around it like the castles Lundy remembered from Earth and his childhood, when there were clouds of a certain kind at sunset. That's what the whole place looked like, under the flaring golden light. Cloud-cuckoo land at sunset. Remote, dreaming in beauty, with the black water drawn across it like a veil—something never destroyed because it never existed. The creatures who came from between the golden gates and down the road were like tiny wisps of those clouds, torn free by some cold wandering breeze and driven away from the light. They came drifting toward Lundy. They didn't seem to be moving fast, but they must have been because quite suddenly they were among the weeds. There were a lot of them; maybe forty or fifty. They seemed to be between three and four feet tall, and they were all the same sad, blue-grey, twilight color. Lundy couldn't see what they were. They were vaguely man-shaped, and vaguely finny, and something that was more than vaguely something else, only he couldn't place it. He was suddenly beyond caring. The dull black curtain around his mind got a hole in it, and fear came shrieking through it. He could feel the working and pulling of his vac-suit where the flowers were chewing on it as though it were his own skin. He could feel sweat running cold on his body. In a minute that would be sea water running, and then.... Lundy began to fight. His lips peeled back off his teeth, but he didn't make any noise except his heavy breathing. He fought the flowers, partly with the blaster, partly with brute strength. No science, no thought. Just the last blind struggle of an animal that didn't want to die. The flowers held him. They smothered him, crushed him down, wrapped him in lovely burning petals of destruction. He seared a lot of them, but there were always more. Lundy didn't fight long. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up a little toward a rigid, knotted belly, blind with sweat, his heart kicking him like a logger's boot. Cold, tense—waiting. And then the flowers went away. They didn't want to. They let go reluctantly, drawing back and snarling like cats robbed of a fat mouse, making small hungry feints at him. But they went.

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61459

THE GOVERNOR OF GLAVE BY KEITH LAUMER The revolution was over and peace restored—naturally Retief expected the worst! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I Retief turned back the gold-encrusted scarlet cuff of the mess jacket of a First Secretary and Consul, gathered in the three eight-sided black dice, shook them by his right ear and sent them rattling across the floor to rebound from the bulk-head. "Thirteen's the point," the Power Section Chief called. "Ten he makes it!" "Oh ... Mr. Retief," a strained voice called. Retief looked up. A tall thin youth in the black-trimmed gray of a Third Secretary flapped a sheet of paper from the edge of the circle surrounding the game. "The Ambassador's compliments, sir, and will you join him and the staff in the conference room at once?" Retief rose and dusted his knees. "That's all for now, boys," he said. "I'll take the rest of your money later." He followed the junior diplomat from the ward room, along the bare corridors of the crew level, past the glare panel reading NOTICE—FIRST CLASS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, through the chandeliered and draped ballroom and along a stretch of soundless carpet to a heavy door bearing a placard with the legend CONFERENCE IN SESSION. "Ambassador Sternwheeler seemed quite upset, Mr. Retief," the messenger said. "He usually is, Pete." Retief took a cigar from his breast pocket. "Got a light?" The Third Secretary produced a permatch. "I don't know why you smoke those things instead of dope sticks, Mr. Retief," he said. "The Ambassador hates the smell." Retief nodded. "I only smoke this kind at conferences. It makes for shorter sessions." He stepped into the room. Ambassador Sternwheeler eyed him down the length of the conference table. "Ah, Mr. Retief honors us with his presence. Do be seated, Retief." He fingered a yellow Departmental despatch. Retief took a chair, puffing out a dense cloud of smoke. "As I have been explaining to the remainder of my staff for the past quarter-hour," Sternwheeler rumbled, "I've been the recipient of important intelligence." He blinked at Retief expectantly. Retief raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry. "It seems," Sternwheeler went on, "that there has been a change in regime on Glave. A week ago, the government which invited the dispatch of this mission—and to which we're accredited—was overthrown. The former ruling class has fled into exile. A popular workers' and peasants' junta has taken over." "Mr. Ambassador," Counsellor Magnan broke in, rising. "I'd like to be the first—" he glanced around the table—"or one of the first, anyway, to welcome the new government of Glave into the family of planetary ruling bodies—" "Sit down, Magnan!" Sternwheeler snapped. "Of course the Corps always recognizes de facto sovereignty. The problem is merely one of acquainting ourselves with the policies of this new group—a sort of blue-collar coalition, it seems. In what position that leaves this Embassy I don't yet know." "I suppose this means we'll spend the next month in a parking orbit," Counsellor Magnan sighed. "Unfortunately," Sternwheeler went on, "the entire affair has apparently been carried off without recourse to violence, leaving the Corps no excuse to move in—that is, it appears our assistance in restoring order will not be required." "Glave was one of the old Contract Worlds," Retief said. "What's become of the Planetary Manager General and the technical staff? And how do the peasants and workers plan to operate the atmospheric purification system, the Weather Control station, the tide regulation complexes?" "I'm more concerned at present with the status of the Mission! Will we be welcomed by these peasants or peppered with buckshot?" "You say that this is a popular junta, and that the former leaders have fled into exile," Retief said. "May I ask the source?" "The despatch cites a 'reliable Glavian source'." "That's officialese for something cribbed from a broadcast news tape. Presumably the Glavian news services are in the hands of the revolution. In that case—" "Yes, yes, there is the possibility that the issue is yet in doubt. Of course we'll have to exercise caution in making our approach. It wouldn't do to make overtures to the wrong side." "Oh, I think we need have no fear on that score," the Chief of the Political Section spoke up. "I know these entrenched cliques. Once challenged by an aroused populace, they scuttle for safety—with large balances safely tucked away in neutral banks." "I'd like to go on record," Magnan piped, "as registering my deep gratification at this fulfillment of popular aspirations—" "The most popular aspiration I know of is to live high off someone else's effort," Retief said. "I don't know of anyone outside the Corps who's managed it." "Gentlemen!" Sternwheeler bellowed. "I'm awaiting your constructive suggestions—not an exchange of political views. We'll arrive off Glave in less than six hours. I should like before that time to have developed some notion regarding to whom I shall expect to offer my credentials!" There was a discreet tap at the door; it opened and the young Third Secretary poked his head in. "Mr. Ambassador, I have a reply to your message—just received from Glave. It's signed by the Steward of the GFE, and I thought you'd want to see it at once...." "Yes, of course; let me have it." "What's the GFE?" someone asked. "It's the revolutionary group," the messenger said, passing the message over. "GFE? GFE? What do the letters SIGNIFY?" "Glorious Fun Eternally," Retief suggested. "Or possibly Goodies For Everybody." "I believe that's 'Glavian Free Electorate'," the Third Secretary said. Sternwheeler stared at the paper, lips pursed. His face grew pink. He slammed the paper on the table. "Well, gentlemen! It appears our worst fears have been realized! This is nothing less than a warning! A threat! We're advised to divert course and bypass Glave entirely. It seems the GFE wants no interference from meddling foreign exploiters, as they put it!" Magnan rose. "If you'll excuse me Mr. Ambassador, I want to get off a message to Sector HQ to hold my old job for me—" "Sit down, you idiot!" Sternwheeler roared. "If you think I'm consenting to have my career blighted—my first Ambassadorial post whisked out from under me—the Corps made a fool of—" "I'd like to take a look at that message," Retief said. It was passed along to him. He read it. "I don't believe this applies to us, Mr. Ambassador." "What are you talking about? It's addressed to me by name!" "It merely states that 'meddling foreign exploiters' are unwelcome. Meddling foreigners we are, but we don't qualify as exploiters unless we show a profit—and this appears to be shaping up as a particularly profitless venture." "What are you proposing, Mr. Retief?" "That we proceed to make planetfall as scheduled, greet our welcoming committee with wide diplomatic smiles, hint at largesse in the offing and settle down to observe the lie of the land." "Just what I was about to suggest," Magnan said. "That might be dangerous," Sternwheeler said. "That's why I didn't suggest it," Magnan said. "Still it's essential that we learn more of the situation than can be gleaned from official broadcasts," Sternwheeler mused. "Now, while I can't justify risking the entire Mission, it might be advisable to dispatch a delegation to sound out the new regime." "I'd like to volunteer," Magnan said, rising. "Of course, the delegates may be murdered—" "—but unfortunately, I'm under treatment at the moment." Magnan sat down. "—which will place us in an excellent position, propaganda-wise. "What a pity I can't go," the Military Attache said. "But my place is with my troops." "The only troops you've got are the Assistant Attache and your secretary," Magnan pointed out. "Say, I'd like to be down there in the thick of things," the Political Officer said. He assumed a grave expression. "But of course I'll be needed here, to interpret results." "I appreciate your attitude, gentlemen," Sternwheeler said, studying the ceiling. "But I'm afraid I must limit the privilege of volunteering for this hazardous duty to those officers of more robust physique, under forty years of age—" "Tsk. I'm forty-one," Magnan said. "—and with a reputation for adaptability." His glance moved along the table. "Do you mind if I run along now, Mr. Ambassador?" Retief said. "It's time for my insulin shot." Sternwheeler's mouth dropped open. "Just kidding," Retief said. "I'll go. But I have one request, Mr. Ambassador: no further communication with the ground until I give the all-clear." II Retief grounded the lighter, in-cycled the lock and stepped out. The hot yellow Glavian sun beat down on a broad expanse of concrete, an abandoned service cart and a row of tall ships casting black shadows toward the silent control tower. A wisp of smoke curled up from the shed area at the rim of the field. There was no other sign of life. Retief walked over to the cart, tossed his valise aboard, climbed into the driver's seat and headed for the operations building. Beyond the port, hills rose, white buildings gleaming against the deep green slopes. Near the ridge, a vehicle moved ant-like along a winding road, a dust trail rising behind it. Faintly a distant shot sounded. Papers littered the ground before the Operations Building. Retief pushed open the tall glass door, stood listening. Slanting sunlight reflected from a wide polished floor, at the far side of which illuminated lettering over empty counters read IMMIGRATION, HEALTH and CUSTOMS. He crossed to the desk, put the valise down, then leaned across the counter. A worried face under an oversized white cap looked up at him. "You can come out now," Retief said. "They've gone." The man rose, dusting himself off. He looked over Retief's shoulder. "Who's gone?" "Whoever it was that scared you." "Whatta ya mean? I was looking for my pencil." "Here it is." Retief plucked a worn stub from the pocket of the soiled shirt sagging under the weight of braided shoulderboards. "You can sign me in as a Diplomatic Representative. A break for you—no formalities necessary. Where can I catch a cab for the city?" The man eyed Retief's bag. "What's in that?" "Personal belongings under duty-free entry." "Guns?" "No, thanks, just a cab." "You got no gun?" The man raised his voice. "That's right, fellows," Retief called out. "No gun; no knife, not even a small fission bomb. Just a few pairs of socks and some reading matter." A brown-uniformed man ran from behind the Customs Counter, holding a long-barreled blast-rifle centered on the Corps insignia stitched to the pocket of Retief's powder-blue blazer. "Don't try nothing," he said. "You're under arrest." "It can't be overtime parking. I've only been here five minutes." "Hah!" The gun-handler moved out from the counter, came up to Retief. "Empty out your pockets!" he barked. "Hands overhead!" "I'm just a diplomat, not a contortionist," Retief said, not moving. "Do you mind pointing that thing in some other direction?" "Looky here, Mister, I'll give the orders. We don't need anybody telling us how to run our business." "I'm telling you to shift that blaster before I take it away from you and wrap it around your neck," Retief said conversationally. The cop stepped back uncertainly, lowering the gun. "Jake! Horny! Pud! come on out!" Three more brown uniforms emerged from concealment. "Who are you fellows hiding from, the top sergeant?" Retief glanced over the ill-fitting uniforms, the unshaved faces, the scuffed boots. "Tell you what. When he shows up, I'll engage him in conversation. You beat it back to the barracks and grab a quick bath—" "That's enough smart talk." The biggest of the three newcomers moved up to Retief. "You stuck your nose in at the wrong time. We just had a change of management around here." "I heard about it," Retief said. "Who do I complain to?" "Complain? What about?" "The port's a mess," Retief barked. "Nobody on duty to receive official visitors! No passenger service facilities! Why, do you know I had to carry my own bag—" "All right, all right, that's outside my department. You better see the boss." "The boss? I thought you got rid of the bosses." "We did, but now we got new ones." "They any better than the old ones?" "This guy asks too many questions," the man with the gun said. "Let's let Sozier answer 'em." "Who's he?" "He's the Military Governor of the City." "Now we're getting somewhere," Retief said. "Lead the way, Jake—and don't forget my bag." Sozier was a small man with thin hair oiled across a shiny scalp, prominent ears and eyes like coal chips set in rolls of fat. He glowered at Retief from behind a polished desk occupying the center of a spacious office. "I warned you off," he snapped. "You came anyway." He leaned forward and slammed a fist down on the desk. "You're used to throwing your weight around, but you won't throw it around here! There'll be no spies pussyfooting around Glave!" "Looking for what, Mr. Sozier?" "Call me General!" "Mind if I sit down?" Retief pulled out a chair, seated himself and took out a cigar. "Curiously enough," he said, lighting up, "the Corps has no intention of making any embarrassing investigations. We deal with the existing government, no questions asked." His eyes held the other's. "Unless, of course, there are evidences of atrocities or other illegal measures." The coal-chip eyes narrowed. "I don't have to make explanations to you or anybody else." "Except, presumably, the Glavian Free Electorate," Retief said blandly. "But tell me, General—who's actually running the show?" A speaker on the desk buzzed. "Hey, Corporal Sozier! Wes's got them two hellions cornered. They're holed up in the Birthday Cake—" "General Sozier, damn you! and plaster your big mouth shut!" He gestured to one of the uniformed men standing by. "You! Get Trundy and Little Moe up here—pronto!" He swiveled back to Retief. "You're in luck. I'm too busy right now to bother with you. You get back over to the port and leave the same way you came—and tell your blood-sucking friends the easy pickings are over as far as Glave's concerned. You won't lounge around here living high and throwing big parties and cooking up your dirty deals to get fat on at the expense of the working man." Retief dribbled ash on Sozier's desk and glanced at the green uniform front bulging between silver buttons. "Who paid for your potbelly, Sozier?" he inquired carelessly. Sozier's eyes narrowed to slits. "I could have you shot!" "Stop playing games with me, Sozier," Retief rapped. "There's a squadron of Peace Enforcers standing by just in case any apprentice statesmen forget the niceties of diplomatic usage. I suggest you start showing a little intelligence about now, or even Horny and Pud are likely to notice." Sozier's fingers squeaked on the arms of his chair. He swallowed. "You might start by assigning me an escort for a conducted tour of the capital," Retief went on. "I want to be in a position to confirm that order has been re-established, and that normal services have been restored. Otherwise it may be necessary to send in a Monitor Unit to straighten things out." "You know you can't meddle with the internal affairs of a sovereign world!" Retief sighed. "The trouble with taking over your boss's job is discovering its drawbacks. It's disillusioning, I know, Sozier, but—" "All right! Take your tour! You'll find everything running as smooth as silk! Utilities, police, transport, environmental control—" "What about Space Control? Glave Tower seems to be off the air." "I shut it down. We don't need anything and we don't want anything from the outside." "Where's the new Premier keeping himself? Does he share your passion for privacy?" The general got to his feet. "I'm letting you take your look, Mr. Big Nose. I'm giving you four hours. Then out! And the next meddling bureaucrat that tries to cut atmosphere on Glave without a clearance gets burned!" "I'll need a car." "Jake! You stick close to this bird. Take him to the main power plant, the water works and the dispatch center. Ride him around town and show him we're doing okay without a bunch of leeches bossing us. Then dump him at the port—and see that he leaves." "I'll plan my own itinerary, thanks. I can't promise I'll be finished in four hours—but I'll keep you advised." "I warned you—" "I heard you. Five times. And I only warned you once. You're getting ahead of me." Retief rose, motioned to the hulking guard. "Come on, Jake. We've got a lot of ground to cover before we come back for our dinner." III At the curb, Retief held out his hand. "Give me the power cylinder out of your rifle, Jake." "Huh?" "Come on, Jake. You've got a nervous habit of playing with the firing stud. We don't want any accidents." "How do you get it out? They only give me this thing yesterday." Retief pocketed the cylinder. "You sit in back. I'll drive." He wheeled the car off along a broad avenue crowded with vehicles and lined with flowering palms, behind which stately white buildings reared up into the pale sky. "Nice looking city, Jake," Retief said conversationally. "What's the population?" "I dunno. I only been here a year." "What about Horny and Pud? Are they natives?" "Whatta ya mean, natives? They're just as civilized as me." "My boner, Jake. Known Sozier long?" "Sure. He useta come around to the club." "I take it he was in the army under the old regime?" "Yeah—but he didn't like the way they run it. Nothing but band playing and fancy marching. There wasn't nobody to fight." "Just between us, Jake—where did the former Planetary Manager General go?" Retief watched Jake's heavy face in the mirror. Jake jumped, clamped his mouth shut. "I don't know nothing." Half an hour later, after a tour of the commercial center, Retief headed towards the city's outskirts. The avenue curved, leading up along the flank of a low hill. "I must admit I'm surprised, Jake," Retief said. "Everything seems orderly. No signs of riots or panic. Power, water, communications normal—just as the general said. Remarkable, isn't it, considering that the entire managerial class has packed up and left?" "You wanta see the Power Plant?" Retief could see perspiration beaded on the man's forehead under the uniform cap. "Sure. Which way?" With Jake directing, Retief ascended to the ridge top, cruised past the blank white facade of the station. "Quiet, isn't it?" Retief pulled the car in to the curb. "Let's go inside." "Huh? Corporal Sozier didn't say nothing—" "You're right, Jake. That leaves it to our discretion." "He won't like it." "The corporal's a busy man, Jake. We won't worry him by telling him about it." Jake followed Retief up the walk. The broad double doors were locked. "Let's try the back." The narrow door set in the high blank wall opened as Retief approached. A gun barrel poked out, followed by a small man with bushy red hair. He looked Retief over. "Who's this party, Jake?" he barked. "Sozier said show him the plant," Jake said. "What we need is more guys to pull duty, not tourists. Anyway, I'm Chief Engineer here. Nobody comes in here 'less I like their looks." Retief moved forward, stood looking down at the redhead. The little man hesitated, then waved him past. "Lucky for you I like your looks." Inside, Retief surveyed the long room, the giant converter units, the massive busbars. Armed men—some in uniform, some in work clothes or loud sport shirts—stood here and there. Other men read meters, adjusted controls or inspected dials. "You've got more guards than workers," Retief said. "Expecting trouble?" The redhead bit the corner from a plug of spearmint. He glanced around the plant. "Things is quiet now; but you never know." "Rather old-fashioned equipment isn't it? When was it installed?" "Huh? I dunno. What's wrong with it?" "What's your basic power source, a core sink? Lithospheric friction? Sub-crustal hydraulics?" "Beats me, Mister. I'm the boss here, not a dern mechanic." A gray-haired man carrying a clipboard walked past, studied a panel, made notes, glanced up to catch Retief's eye, moved on. "Everything seems to be running normally," Retief remarked. "Sure. Why not?" "Records being kept up properly?" "Sure. Some of these guys, all they do is walk around looking at dials and writing stuff on paper. If it was me, I'd put 'em to work." Retief strolled over to the gray-haired man, now scribbling before a bank of meters. He glanced at the clipboard. Power off at sunset. Tell Corasol was scrawled in block letters across the record sheet. Retief nodded, rejoined his guard. "All right, Jake. Let's have a look at the communications center." Back in the car, headed west, Retief studied the blank windows of office buildings, the milling throngs in beer bars, shooting galleries, tattoo parlors, billiard halls, pinball arcades, bordellos and half-credit casinos. "Everybody seems to be having fun," he remarked. Jake stared out the window. "Yeah." "Too bad you're on duty, Jake. You could be out there joining in." "Soon as the corporal gets things organized, I'm opening me up a place to show dirty tri-di's. I'll get my share." "Meanwhile, let the rest of 'em have their fun, eh Jake?" "Look, Mister, I been thinking. Maybe you better gimme back that kick-stick you taken outa my gun...." "Sorry, Jake; no can do. Tell me, what was the real cause of the revolution? Not enough to eat? Too much regimentation?" "Naw, we always got plenty to eat. There wasn't none of that regimentation up till I joined up in the corporal's army." "Rigid class structure, maybe? Educational discrimination?" Jake nodded. "Yeah, it was them schools done it. All the time trying to make a feller do some kind of class. Big shots. Know it all. Gonna make us sit around and view tapes. Figgered they was better than us." "And Sozier's idea was you'd take over, and you wouldn't have to be bothered." "Aw, it wasn't Sozier's idea. He ain't the big leader." "Where does the big leader keep himself?" "I dunno. I guess he's pretty busy right now." Jake snickered. "Some of them guys call themselves colonels turned out not to know nothing about how to shoot off the guns." "Shooting, eh? I thought it was a sort of peaceful revolution. The managerial class were booted out, and that was that." "I don't know nothing," Jake snapped. "How come you keep trying to get me to say stuff I ain't supposed to talk about? You want to get me in trouble?" "Oh, you're already in trouble, Jake. But if you stick with me, I'll try to get you out of it. Where exactly did the refugees head for? How did they leave? Must have been a lot of them; I'd say in a city of this size alone, they'd run into the thousands." "I don't know." "Of course, it depends on your definition of a big shot. Who's included in that category, Jake?" "You know, the slick-talking ones; the fancy dressers; the guys that walk around and tell other guys what to do. We do all the work and they get all the big pay." "I suppose that would cover scientists, professional men, executives, technicians of all sorts, engineers, teachers—all that crowd." "Yeah, them are the ones." "And once you got them out of the way, the regular fellows would have a chance. Chaps that don't spend all their time taking baths and reading books and using big words; good Joes that don't mind picking their noses in public." "We got as much right as anybody—" "Jake, who's Corasol?" "He's—I don't know." "I thought I overheard his name somewhere." "Uh, here's the communication center," Jake cut in. Retief swung into a parking lot under a high blank facade. He set the brake and stepped out. "Lead the way, Jake." "Look, Mister, the corporal only wanted me to show you the outside." "Anything to hide, Jake?" Jake shook his head angrily and stamped past Retief. "When I joined up with Sozier, I didn't figger I'd be getting in this kind of mess." "I know, Jake. It's tough. Sometimes it seems like a fellow works harder after he's thrown out the parasites than he did before." A cautious guard let Retief and Jake inside, followed them along bright-lit aisles among consoles, cables, batteries of instruments. Armed men in careless uniforms lounged, watching. Here and there a silent technician worked quietly. Retief paused by one, an elderly man in a neat white coverall, with a purple spot under one eye. "Quite a bruise you've got there," Retief commented heartily. "Power failure at sunset," he added softly. The technician hesitated, nodded and moved on. Back in the car, Retief gave Jake directions. At the end of three hours, he had seen twelve smooth-running, heavily guarded installations. "So far, so good, Jake," he said. "Next stop, Sub-station Number Nine." In the mirror, Jake's face stiffened. "Hey, you can't go down there—" "Something going on there, Jake?" "That's where—I mean, no. I don't know." "I don't want to miss anything, Jake. Which way?" "I ain't going down there," Jake said sullenly. Retief braked. "In that case, I'm afraid our association is at an end, Jake." "You mean ... you're getting out here?" "No, you are." "Huh? Now wait a minute, Mister! The corporal said I was to stay with you." Retief accelerated. "That's settled, then. Which way?" IV Retief pulled the car to a halt two hundred yards from the periphery of a loose crowd of brown-uniformed men who stood in groups scattered across a broad plaza, overflowing into a stretch of manicured lawn before the bare, functional facade of sub-station number Nine. In the midst of the besieging mob, Sozier's red face and bald head bobbed as he harangued a cluster of green-uniformed men from his place in the rear of a long open car. "What's it all about, Jake?" Retief enquired. "Since the parasites have all left peacefully, I'm having a hard time figuring out who'd be holed up in the pumping station—and why. Maybe they haven't gotten the word that it's all going to be fun and games from now on." "If the corporal sees you over here—" "Ah, the good corporal. Glad you mentioned him, Jake. He's the man to see." Retief stepped out of the car and started through the crowd. A heavy lorry loaded with an immense tank with the letter H blazoned on its side trundled into the square from a side street, moved up to a position before the building. A smaller car pulled alongside Sozier's limousine. The driver stepped down, handed something to Sozier. A moment later, Sozier's amplified voice boomed across the crowd. "You in there, Corasol! This is General Sozier, and I'm warning you to come out now or you and your smart friends are in for a big surprise. You think I won't blast you out because I don't want to wreck the planet. You see the tank aboard the lorry that just pulled up? It's full of gas—and I got plenty of hoses out here to pump it inside with. I'll put men on the roof and squirt it in the ventilators." Sozier's voice echoed and died. The militiamen eyed the station. Nothing happened. "I know you can hear me, damn you!" Sozier squalled. "You'd better get the doors open and get out here fast!" Retief stepped to Sozier's side. "Say, Corporal, I didn't know you went in for practical jokes." Sozier jerked around to gape at Retief. "What are you doing here!" he burst out. "I told Jake—where is that—" "Jake didn't like the questions I was asking," Retief said, "so he marched me up here to report to you." "Jake, you damn fool!" Sozier roared. "I got a good mind—" "I disagree, Sozier," Retief cut in. "I think you're a complete imbecile. Sitting out here in the open yelling at the top of your lungs, for example. Corasol and his party might get annoyed and spray that fancy car you've swiped with something a lot more painful than words." "Eh?" Sozier's head whipped around to stare at the building. "Isn't that a gun I see sticking out?" Sozier dropped. "Where?" "My mistake. Just a foreign particle on my contact lenses." Retief leaned on the car. "On the other hand, Sozier, most murderers are sneaky about it. I think making a public announcement is a nice gesture on your part. The Monitors won't have any trouble deciding who to hang when they come in to straighten out this mess." Sozier scrambled back onto his seat. "Monitors?" he snarled. "I don't think so. I don't think you'll be around to do any blabbering to anybody." He raised his voice. "Jake! March this spy over to the sidelines. If he tries anything, shoot him!" He gave Retief a baleful grin. "I'll lay the body out nice and ship it back to your cronies. Accidents will happen, you know. It'll be a week or two before they get around to following up—and by then I'll have this little problem under control." Jake looked at Retief uncertainly, fingering his empty rifle. Retief put his hands up. "I guess you got me, Jake," he said. "Careful of that gun, now." Jake glanced at Sozier, gulped, aimed the rifle at Retief and nodded toward the car. As Retief moved off, a murmur swept across the crowd. Retief glanced back. A turret on the station roof was rotating slowly. A shout rose; men surged away from the building, scuffling for way; Sozier yelled. His car started up, moved forward, horns blaring. As Retief watched, a white stream arced up from the turret, catching the sun as it spanned the lawn, plunged down to strike the massed men in a splatter of spray. It searched across the mob, came to rest on Sozier's car. Uniformed men scrambled for safety as the terrified driver gunned the heavy vehicle. The hose followed the car, dropping a solid stream of water on Sozier, kicking and flailing in the back seat. As the car passed from view, down a side street, water was overflowing the sides. "The corporal will feel all the better for an invigorating swim in his mobile pool," Retief commented. "By the way, Jake, I have to be going now. It wouldn't be fair to send you back to your boss without something to back up your story that you were outnumbered, so—" Retief's left fist shot out to connect solidly with Jake's jaw. Jake dropped the gun and sat down hard. Retief turned and headed for the pumping station. The hose had shut down now. A few men were standing, eyeing the building anxiously. Others watched his progress across the square. As Retief passed, he caught scattered comments: "—seen that bird before." "—where he's headed." "—feller Sozier was talking to...." "Hey, you!" Retief was on the grass now. Ahead, the blank wall loomed up. He walked on briskly. "Stop that jasper!" a shout rang out. There was a sharp whine and a black spot appeared on the wall ahead. Near it, a small personnel door abruptly swung inward. Retief sprinted, plunged through the opening as a second shot seared the paint on the doorframe. The door clanged behind him. Retief glanced over the half dozen men confronting him. "I'm Retief, CDT, acting Charge," he said. "Which of you gentlemen is Manager-General Corasol?"

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AIDE MEMOIRE BY KEITH LAUMER The Fustians looked like turtles—but they could move fast when they chose! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet of parchment and looked grave. "This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—" "Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five." "The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—" "That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody." "Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future. You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception." "I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control group—" "To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting sponsorship for a matter of weeks now." "Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and athletic development," Retief said. "If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well anticipate us. They're very active here." "That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke instead of us." "Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air. Retief raised one eyebrow. "For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a positive statement." Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he said. "I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would help." "Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity." "Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience, Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise you, for example, would be tripping over your beard." Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian." Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your permission, Mr. Ambassador...?" Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me, Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with Youth groups—would create a far better impression." "Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the alignment of this SCARS organization?" "You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said. "Politics mean nothing to them ... yet." "Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but business. But what has Fust got that they could use?" "You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan. "Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci are barely ahead of them." "Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like fission bombs." Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying the social patterns of the local youth." "I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack." II Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards. It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them, shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the shipyard gates, creaked to a halt. "Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian. "Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste." Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up professional racing," he said. "Daredevil." He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed. Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back. A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace peered out at Retief. "Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new liner today." "May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist. "The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of papers." "I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner." The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines.... "What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief. "I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief. "We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger. "Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in nightmares! Put by the plans!" "My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project." The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why should it be secret?" "You tell me." The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said. "We merely construct a passenger liner." "Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out." The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?" "Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the shame for the discourtesy of youth." Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed through the drawings, clicking the shutter. "A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent day by day." "Why don't you elders clamp down?" "Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new. Unknown in my youth was such insolence." "The police—" "Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have we needed ought ere now." "What's behind it?" "They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with them." Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed the hut, then started toward it. "That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?" "Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled. "Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions." "I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?" "The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well, stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance. "Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks." He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate. The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight: "Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage, arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your intransigence." Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep back. Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline. The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray. Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but the thought failed to keep the chill off. Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced. "That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No need to crowd up." "There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed. "I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me." The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied. The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car, tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure. So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight. They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault, after running a copy for the reference files. And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in the Eastern Arm. But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly Fustian hadn't told them anything. At least not willingly.... Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the shipyard. The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position. Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old fellow had put up a struggle. There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of a warehouse. Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various fittings in the lock. It snicked open. He eased the door aside far enough to enter. Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head. Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine and pulled the sack free. "It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you into this." The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth, Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments." "How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help." "Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It would be your life." "I doubt if they'd go that far." "Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light here. But for the toughness of my hide...." Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a sound like a seal coughing. "Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons to complete the task." "Weapons? I thought it was illegal!" "Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide fuel to the Devil himself." "The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is." "And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the block and tackle." Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away. The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest. Slowly he got to his feet. "My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours." "Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right now, let's get out of here." Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp, bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in my wrath. Slock, beware!" "Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He knelt, sniffed at the spot. "What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?" Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge Moss Rock ." "The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?" "I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements after I have settled a score with certain Youths." "We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium pile." III Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the official luxury space barge Moss Rock . "A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter. "A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away to sleep." "Let's go aboard and take a look around." They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it. "Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers. "Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?" "I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He passed the metal band to Retief. "SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast." Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm embrace. "Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?" "The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace. "Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind." "No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength." "Ask him where the titanite is tucked away." "Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain." The youth gurgled. "Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the elder, mouth snapping. "This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder." "That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around." The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the bare back of the Fustian— "By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!" Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old. But I thought—" "This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the carapace and leave the patient living." "It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us and get out of here. His folks may come home." "Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned. Three youths came from behind the sheds. "Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight. Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers holding the bag, I'll bet." "Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk. "Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars. "I'll jump around and distract them." Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians. They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the Moss Rock as Whonk took him in full charge. Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed hastily, seriously dented but still mobile. Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast, but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her." "The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?" "The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about this gambit." "Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one." "Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I know where to find the boss." A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music. Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr. Ambassador." "I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He turned back to the Fustian on his left. "Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous." The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the Lament of Hatching ," he said; "our National Dirge." "Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of instruments—" "It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial Ambassador suspiciously. "Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly. "And if I may interrupt a moment—" Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived, perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies." "This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much do you know about them, Mr. Minister?" "Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a carapace to tame their irresponsibility." "We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful energies," said Magnan. "Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge." "But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on us to make happy these golden hours." The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit." "But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations," cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—" "You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled boreholes and blasted." "Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow! Slop I believe his name is." "Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—" Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering. Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose. Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green wine gushed on the tablecloth. "What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked, breathing deeply. "Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine. "Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in sideways. There's a matter you should know about—" "Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr. Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group." Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know." "Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to catch a few shots of the presentation." Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room, took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras. "How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve during the years ahead." Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival. Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth. Slock stared at him, drew back. "You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember? It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're building." IV With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear of the floor. "Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen. "Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy. The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed. The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo." Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!" "The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was planned for today. When the Moss Rock blew, a variety of clues were to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity." "The Moss Rock ?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic. Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!" Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan watched, open-mouthed. "The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their purpose." "Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase. Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest." Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in Whonk's wake. In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a code letter. No reply. He tried another. "No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."

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20013

Pointillism Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's obstruction of justice case against President Clinton is likely to turn on his identification of the author of the so-called "Talking Points." Like Shakespeare's works and the Bible, the TP, a three-page document, has inspired numerous schools of thought that disagree on the meaning of seemingly banal phrases and discern the handiwork of different authors. As a service to scholars in the burgeoning field of TP Studies--as well as to the general public--here is a Talmudic exegesis, a Reader's Guide to the TP . Background: Only one person claims to have firsthand knowledge of the TP's origins: Linda Tripp. Tripp told Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff that Monica Lewinsky had given her the TP on Jan. 14, 1998, while driving Tripp home from work. That night, Tripp handed the document over to Starr's office. The following day, wearing an FBI-supplied wire, she met Lewinsky at the Pentagon City, Va., Ritz-Carlton. FBI agents interrupted their conversation and took Lewinsky to a room in the hotel for questioning. The TP advises Tripp on crafting an affidavit that would recant statements she had made to Newsweek 's Isikoff. Tripp told Isikoff last summer that she had bumped into Kathleen Willey after she left the Oval Office Nov. 29, 1993, and that Willey had looked flushed, lipstickless, and happy. Three days before Tripp received the TP, Willey gave sworn testimony in the Paula Jones case that the president had fondled her breasts and placed her hand on his crotch. Tripp had been scheduled to be deposed in the Jones case in December, but the deposition was postponed. Whodunit? There are seven theories about the authorship of the TP. The leading suspects: Lewinsky, Tripp, her ex-lawyer Kirby Behre, Clinton, Bruce Lindsey (the president's closest aide), the Right-Wing Conspiracy, and a collaboration among several of the above. Click here for a summary of the major theories. The TP appears to have been composed in three parts, each in a different voice. The first section, in which Tripp receives legal-sounding advice, is smoothly and efficiently written. The document then shifts from the substance of the affidavit to the strategy behind it, with special reference to Tripp's relationship with the president's lawyer Robert Bennett. The final portion recasts the original section in the first person. It also includes a chatty paragraph discrediting allegations about Lewinsky's alleged affair with Clinton. Exegesis: This is the widely circulated version of the TP. For annotations, click on the hot-linked phrases. Points to Make in an Affidavit Your first few paragraphs should be about yourself--what you do now, what you did at the White House, and for how many years you were there as a career person and as a political appointee. You and Kathleen were friends. At around the time of her husband's death (The President has claimed it was after her husband died. Do you really want to contradict him?), she came to you after she allegedly came out of the oval and looked (however she looked), you don't recall her exact words, but she claimed at the time (whatever she claimed) and was very happy. You did not see her go in or see her come out. Talk about when you became out of touch with her and maybe why. The next you heard of her was when a Newsweek reporter (I wouldn't name him specifically) showed up in your office saying she was naming you as someone who would corroborate that she was sexually harassed. You spoke with her that evening, etc., and she relayed to you a sequence of events that was very dissimilar from what you remembered happening. As a result of your conversation with her and subsequent reports that showed that she had tried to enlist the help of someone else in her lie that the President sexually harassed her, you now do not believe that what she claimed happened really happened. You now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc. You never saw her go into the oval office, or come out of the oval office. You are not sure you've been clear about whose side you're on. (Kirby has been saying you should look neutral; better for credibility but you aren't neutral. Neutral makes you look like you're on the other team since you are a political appointee) It's important to you that they think you're a team player, after all, you are a political appointee. You believe that they think you're on the other side because you wouldn't meet with them. You want to meet with Bennett. You are upset about the comment he made, but you'll take the high road and do what's in your best interest. December 18th, you were in a better position to attend an all day or half-day deposition, but now you are into JCOC mode. Your livelihood is dependent on the success of this program. Therefore, you want to provide an affidavit laying out all of the facts in lieu of a deposition. You want Bennett's people to see your affidavit before it's signed. Your deposition should include enough information to satisfy their questioning. By the way, remember how I said there was someone else that I knew about. Well, she turned out to be a huge liar. I found out she left the WH because she was stalking the P or something like that. Well, at least that gets me out of another scandal I know about. The first few paragraphs should be about me--what I do now, what I did at the White House and for how many years I was there as a career person and as a political appointee. Kathleen and I were friends. At around the time of her husband's death, she came to me after she allegedly came out of the oval office and looked _____, I don't recall her exact words, but she claimed at the time ______ and was very happy. I did not see her go in or see her come out. Talk about when I became out of touch with her and maybe why. The next time I heard of her was when a Newsweek reporter showed up in my office saying she was naming me as a someone who would corroborate that she was sexually harassed by the President. I spoke with her that evening, etc., and she relayed to me a sequence of events that was very dissimilar from what I remembered happening. As a result of my conversation with her and subsequent reports that showed she had tried to enlist the help of someone else in her lie that the President sexually harassed her, I now do not believe that what she claimed happened really happened. I now find it completely plausible that she herself smeared her lipstick, untucked her blouse, etc. I never saw her go into the oval office, or come out of the oval office. I have never observed the President behave inappropriately with anybody. Note 1 Here are seven good guesses about the authorship of the TP: 1) Lewinsky, the Lone Gunman. Panic-stricken by Tripp's threat that she would expose Lewinsky's affair with Clinton if asked about it in a deposition, Lewinsky mustered all her intellectual resources to cobble together the TP. Lewinsky's former lawyer, William Ginsburg, never denied his client's involvement in the document's preparation. Strikes against this theory: a) Lewinsky doesn't have enough knowledge of the law. b) Apparently, she is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Tripp has said she immediately suspected the TP was too deftly crafted to have originated with Lewinsky. c) Lewinsky was too panic-stricken to have acted this rationally. Before Christmas, for example, the tapes record her suggesting that Tripp have a "foot accident" and be hospitalized during the time her deposition was scheduled to take place. 2) Tripp, the Manipulative Bitch. Gunning to bring down the president after Bennett denounced her, Tripp entrapped Lewinsky. One scenario has her prodding the gullible young woman to write the TP so she, Tripp, could get physical evidence of obstruction of justice. Another has her drafting a chunk of the TP--or even the entire thing--herself. A senior White House official has even suggested a draft of the TP lives on the hard drive of Tripp's computer. The theory's defects: a) Why would Tripp risk getting caught fabricating evidence when she has mountains of damning tapes and e-mail? b) While the tapes expose Tripp as a horrible friend and a vicious schemer, we have no evidence that she is capable of conceiving of such a complicated machination. 3) The Right-Wing Conspiracy. An elaboration of the Tripp theory. Without any specific evidence, proponents of this theory posit that Tripp drafted the TP with the assistance of lawyers involved in the Jones case or otherwise committed to conservative causes. 4) Behre, the White House Mole. When Tripp testified before Congress about Travelgate and Foster's death, the White House helped her retain Behre. She fired him three days before the TP surfaced, when he asked her to hand the tapes over to Bennett. Behre has the knowledge and the motive (he's loyal to the White House) to write the TP. (Some implicate Behre's replacement, James Moody. It seems unlikely, however, that Moody, a conservative stalwart, would have helped Tripp prepare talking points apparently so favorable to the president.) And while the document presents legal-sounding advice, it's too rambling, repetitive, and error-ridden to have been written out by a lawyer worth his salt (though it might be notes based on a lawyer's advice). In addition, lawyers know better than to give a witness written instructions about the preparation of false testimony. Note, however, that, as one observer argues, if the TP is entirely true (Willey did muss her own clothes, etc.), assisting in its preparation would not be unethical or tantamount to subornation of perjury--though it would then be most unlikely that the TP was prepared by Moody or a right-wing cabal. 5) Clinton, the Dictator. A lawyer by training, Clinton spent much time on the phone with Lewinsky. He could have dictated points during his calls, and he has a clear interest in changing Tripp's testimony. But in crises such as this one, Clinton has historically turned to proxies for his dirty work. Moreover the TP is wrong about what Clinton said in his Jones deposition about when his meeting with Willey took place. 6) Lindsey, the Fixer. Immediately following the TP's release, reporters fingered the president's confidant as a suspect. He was the administration's point man on the Jones case and has been known to wipe up after Clinton's bimbo eruptions. And he had reason to believe he could change or blunt the impact of Tripp's testimony. In August, Tripp told Newsweek she doubted Clinton's advances to Willey constituted sexual harassment, as Willey--despite her later protestations--had not seemed upset at the time. Tripp also contacted Lindsey last summer to discuss the Willey affair. Tripp and Lindsey spoke on at least two more occasions, according to the New York Times . However, there is no evidence that Lewinsky and Lindsey knew each other or ever communicated. 7) A Combo of the Above. While there is no credible scenario in which the people mentioned above could have concocted the TP on their own, several of the suspects could have worked in concert. For instance, it is plausible Tripp and Lewinsky collaborated on the TP with insight from a trained lawyer (Clinton, Lindsey, Behre). As our annotation of the text shows, the TP appears to be the handiwork of multiple authors. Back to story. Note 2 One scenario has the president dictating points over the phone to Lewinsky, with whom he spent much time talking. A lawyer by training, Clinton has a clear interest in changing Tripp's testimony. But the author of the TP seems unfamiliar with Clinton's actual testimony in the Paula Jones case, in which he said Willey's visit occurred before her husband's suicide. This contradiction might exculpate Clinton. But it does not necessarily clear aide Lindsey or others close to the president. After all, the president's sealed, private testimony contradicts his lawyer Bennett's public pronouncements that the encounter with Willey took place after her husband's suicide. Back to story. Note 3 According to Howard Kurtz's book Spin Cycle , this characterization of the Oval Office is common only among White House staffers. And it seems possible that a White House staffer wrote a chunk of the TP. Immediately following the TP's release, reporters fingered Lindsey as the leading suspect. Many speculate that he wipes up after the president's bimbo eruptions; he was also the administration's point man on the Jones case. Lindsey also had reason to believe he could change Tripp's testimony. Last summer, Tripp contacted Lindsey to discuss the Willey affair (she told Newsweek that because Willey didn't seem upset at the time, she didn't think Willey had been sexually harassed). Tripp and Lindsey spoke at least two more times, according to the New York Times . However, there is no evidence that Lewinsky and Lindsey knew each other or ever communicated. Back to story. Note 4 The parenthetical phrasing is emblematic of the tight construction of the first half of the TP. Some theorists have pointed to it as evidence that a lawyer drafted--or at least advised on the drafting of--the document. Fabricating evidence would, of course, be a highly unethical activity for a lawyer, but if, as some administration advocates maintain, the TP is all true, assistance in its drafting would not be unethical. However, as noted later, the TP makes legal errors, and the smooth phrasing could as easily be that of a PR person, journalist, or nonpracticing lawyer. Nonetheless, it casts doubt on the theory that Lewinsky was the lone author. Tripp told Newsweek she suspected immediately that the TP was too deftly crafted to have originated with Lewinsky. Lewinsky's former lawyer Ginsburg never denied his client's involvement in the document's preparation (his theory is that it was a collaborative effort). Back to story. Note 5 Why doesn't the author want to mention Isikoff, the reporter in question? Only Tripp had a clear interest in not seeming unduly familiar with him. For months, she had been meeting clandestinely with Isikoff, discussing her conversations with Lewinsky. Tripp had hoped to remain anonymous in Isikoff's story. There's no good reason why Lindsey should have inserted this detail. Aside from this sentence, there is no specific hint that Tripp penned the TP to entrap Lewinsky. However, Tripp had a motive: She wanted to take down the president after Bennett, his lawyer, denounced her. One scenario has Tripp--with the assistance of lawyers involved in the Jones case or otherwise committed to conservative causes--prodding the gullible Lewinsky to write the TP so she, Tripp, would have clear evidence of attempted obstruction of justice. Another has Tripp drafting a chunk of the TP--or even the whole thing--herself. A senior administration official has suggested that a draft of the TP lives on Tripp's hard drive. The defect with these theories: Why would Tripp risk getting caught fabricating evidence when she has mountains of damning tapes and e-mail? Back to story. Note 7 "Someone else" apparently refers to Julie Steele, a friend of Willey's. Steele initially told Newsweek that Willey had confided the details of the incident with Clinton to her shortly after it happened. Later, Steele changed her story, saying Willey had told her that the president had "made a pass" at her only weeks after the alleged incident and that she had lied at Willey's behest. Back to story. Note 8 On its face, the suggestion seems highly unlikely: that Willey, who had gone in seeking a job from the president, would leave the Oval Office and stop to muss herself, hoping to run into someone who could later confirm a false allegation of sexual advances by Clinton. However, by this time, Steele had changed her story, saying Willey had asked her to lie about exactly when Willey had confided in her and also about the details of the alleged sexual encounter. The suggestion in the TP would be consistent with the amended Steele statements. The TP also says Willey's blouse was untucked--a point that has been cited as evidence Willey was lying, since an untucked blouse would probably have been noticed by the other people waiting in the reception area outside the Oval Office. However, Tripp is quoted in Newsweek as observing only that Willey was "disheveled. Her face was red and her lipstick was off." So the added detail in the TP may have been intended to further discredit Willey. Back to story. Note 9 At this juncture, it seems another author takes over. Note the "the oval" is now referred to as the "oval office." Also, this sentence essentially repeats the advice already given: "You did not see her go in or see her come out." The TP's tenor and tone shift from legalistic to colloquial. Back to story. Note 10 The author is obviously on the side he or she thinks Tripp would do well to be on. As subsequent sentences make clear, that side is the administration's--as distinct from Jones'. Back to story. Note 11 When Tripp testified before Congress about Travelgate and Vince Foster's death, the White House helped her retain lawyer Kirby Behre. She fired Behre three days before she gave the TP to Starr, when, she says, Behre asked her to hand the tapes over to Bennett. Behre has the knowledge and the motive (he's loyal to the White House) to have written the TP. The writer is familiar with what Behre has been telling Tripp and calls him by his first name, which might suggest Tripp (or perhaps Lewinsky, who has been discussing Tripp's legal strategy with her) is the author. However, New York Observer columnist Philip Weiss says presidential adviser and troubleshooter Lindsey also commonly refers to everyone but the president by a first name. However, Behre denies having talked with Lindsey. Back to story. Note 12 This is clumsily phrased: The identity of the "other side" is ambiguous. It sounds more like loose drafting by a PR person than it does the work of a practicing lawyer. Back to story. Note 13 The New York Times and others, quoting "lawyers connected to the case," report Lindsey had earlier advised Tripp to seek Bennett's help, advice Tripp eschewed. Back to story. Note 14 Bennett was quoted as saying that "Linda Tripp is not to be believed" in the Willey controversy. Back to story. Note 15 The date when Tripp was originally scheduled to be deposed by Jones' lawyers. Back to story. Note 16 This is the acronym for the Joint Civilian Orientation Course, a program Tripp ran at the Pentagon. Lewinsky, as well as Tripp, would be familiar with the acronym, as would people in the White House who knew where Tripp had been placed following her transfer. Back to story. Note 17 Presumably, only someone with legal training--though not necessarily a practicing lawyer--would know that an affidavit could substitute for a deposition. However, this is not good lawyerly advice. It is unlikely that Jones' lawyers would have accepted an affidavit in lieu of a deposition from someone who had changed her story. Back to story. Note 18 The writer means "affidavit," since the stated point of this exercise is to enable Tripp to avoid being deposed in person. This is not a mistake that a practicing lawyer would make, though it could be a mistake made in dictation. Back to story. Note 19 The remainder of the document is cast in the first rather than the second person. And, in this paragraph--though not in the following ones--the tone becomes more chatty. This might suggest that Tripp herself is writing the TP in her own words. However, if Tripp were creating a bogus document for purposes of entrapment, it would not seem in her interest to recast second-person paragraphs from earlier in the document in such a way that they are potentially confusing. Back to story. Note 20 This apparent reference to Lewinsky is the only substantive addition to the second part of the document. It seems unlikely that Lewinsky would refer to herself as a "big liar" who was "stalking" the president. However, Lewinsky had recently given sworn testimony in the Jones case that flatly contradicted her lengthy taped conversations with Tripp, in which she had talked about her affair with Clinton. So it is possible that she decided it was better to label herself a liar in this context than to face perjury charges. The word "huge," which appears here, is used by Tripp three times in the transcript of her taped conversations with Lewinsky reported in Newsweek . This point is made by Skip Fox and Jack Gillis, two academics at the University of Southwestern Louisiana whose analysis of the TP may be found here. Back to story. Note 21 Narcissistic phrasing that allegedly sounds very much like Lewinsky. Back to story. Note 22 No effort is made to fill in the blanks. This suggests Tripp is not attempting to construct a first draft in her own words following the earlier instructions. Back to story. Note 23 In the Washington Post version of the TP--given here--a second-person version of this sentence does not appear in the first section of the document. In ABC's version of the document, it appears in both places. Both the Post and ABC claim to have copies of the original TP. In itself, the discrepancy has no apparent significance, although it has been pointed to by theorists who contend that the TP was leaked through more than one source. Back to story.

test

20005

Does Everybody Do It? Campaign finance is an arcane and confusing subject, filled with unspoken understandings. One of these is the distinction between rules that must be obeyed and rules that can be safely flouted. In the Republican primaries, for instance, aides to Bob Dole admitted that they were going to exceed legal limits on how much they could spend, an act commentators compared at the time to running a red light. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton and his aides were helping to develop the so-called "issue" ads produced by state parties--ads which, in theory, weren't supposed to be co-ordinated with his re-election effort. And neither party even bothered to claim that the tens of millions being raised in so-called "soft money," which cannot be legally used for federal elections, was being spent on anything other than the federal election. None of these clear violations was deemed to be especially scandalous, even by prudes at places like Common Cause. Meanwhile, though, a Dole supporter named Simon Fireman is confined to his Boston apartment, where he wears an electronic collar and ponders the $6 million fine he must pay for enlisting his employees at Aqua Leisure Industries, a maker of inflatable pool toys, in a scheme to contribute $69,000 to the Dole campaign. A similar invisible line separates the campaign-finance violations that become major media scandals and those that go unmentioned or rate only as footnotes in the press. It is not immediately obvious why reporters are so fascinated by John Huang's possible use of his position at the Commerce Department to raise money for his party, while they largely ignored the last two secretaries of commerce, Clinton's Ron Brown and George Bush's Robert Mosbacher, who were using the entire department as a fund-raising vehicle. Why is Newt Gingrich's use of GOPAC to raise undisclosed contributions a scandal being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, while Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour's front for avoiding disclosure, the National Policy Forum, rates as a nonstory? In fact, there is no logic to any of it. What's considered an outrage, and even what's considered a crime, are matters determined largely by accident. Advocates of reform are always happy to have a high-profile scandal, like the presently unfolding "Indogate," to help them sensitize the public to just how seamy the whole business of campaign financing is. The last thing they're about to do is explain away the latest revelations as just an exotically textured version of what goes on every day. And press coverage is largely driven by how big a fuss is made by members of the opposition--not by any barometer of relative venality. Right now, Republicans are making an enormous fuss about the Democrats, so the story is huge. But we must pause and ask: Are we making an example out of the DNC for misdeeds that everybody commits? Or did John Huang and James Riady--and perhaps Harold Ickes and Bill Clinton--really do something unusually bad in the last campaign cycle? Much hinges, of course, on facts we don't have. Huang may have asked all his Asian contributors whether they were legal residents of the United States and been misled by them. There's no hard evidence that he did DNC business at Commerce or government business after Clinton moved him to the DNC in 1995. But assuming, for purposes of argument, that most of what has been alleged by Republicans is true, the Indonesian scandal potentially involves three categories of wrongdoing: 1) accepting illegal contributions; 2) trading favors for contributions; and 3) misusing a government position to raise campaign money. Actually, there is a fourth question--whether Huang violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by dealing with his old company, the Indonesian-based Lippo conglomerate, while he was a midlevel official at the Commerce Department. But that's a matter of personal corruption unrelated to the Democratic Party financing, so I won't dwell on it here, even though it's potentially the most serious charge against Huang. Question 1: The DNC has now returned nearly half of the $2.5 million in soft money raised by Huang from Indonesian and other Asian-American sources. Assuming that these contributions were illegal because the contributors weren't legal residents (something that has been fully established only in the case of one $250,000 Korean contribution), did Huang and the DNC do anything out of the ordinary ? Answer: Not really. There are examples beyond number of simply illegal contributions that the press and public just shrugged off. Even Pat Robertson got busted in 1988 for the use of a Christian Broadcasting Network plane--his travels were valued at $260,000. If one focuses on the narrow category of contributions that are illegal because they come from foreigners (even though it is arguably no worse than any other category of violation), there is still little novelty to the Huang affair. Federal Election Commission files disclose many examples of money taken illegally from foreign nationals: Japanese interests contributing to candidates in local races in Hawaii, South Americans giving to the Democratic Party of Florida, and so on. Just a few weeks ago, the RNC returned $15,000 to a Canadian company called Methanex after the contribution was disclosed in Roll Call . 's recent $1 million contribution to the California Republican Party may fall into this category as well. The same goes for contributions that are illegal by virtue of their having been made "in the name of another," an issue that has surfaced in connection with Al Gore's Buddhist temple fund-raiser. The FEC has frequently disallowed contributions made to both parties under aliases. If the Huang case is novel, it would have to be as a deliberate and systematic violation of the laws regarding contributions by noncitizens. In terms of being systematic, there isn't much of a case. Both parties have employed ethnic fund-raisers--Jewish, Korean, Greek, Chinese--for many years. Newt Gingrich held a Sikh fund-raising event last year in California. in 1992 was Yung Soo Yoo, who makes John Huang look like a piker when it come to sleaze. One of the co-chairs of Asian-Americans for Bob Dole was California Rep. Jay Kim, who is under investigation by the FEC for taking illegal contributions from four Korean companies. According to those with experience in fund raising, it is often a delicate matter to establish whether ethnic donors are eligible to give. When someone offers to write you a check for $5,000, you do not ask to see a green card. The reality that neither party is in the habit of investigating its donors is illustrated by various outrageous incidents. In 1992, for example, Republicans got contributions totaling $633,770 from a Japanese-American with Hong Kong connections named Michael Kojima. No one bothered to ask where Kojima, a failed restaurateur with ex-wives suing him for nonsupport, got the money. Ironically enough, his biggest creditor turns out to have been the Lippo Bank of Los Angeles, where he owed $600,000. Huang was not really an innovator; he was simply more successful than his predecessors in both parties in tapping ethnic subcultures for cash. What Huang's higher-ups at the DNC can most be faulted for is not following suspicions they should have had about the huge sums he was reeling in. Instead, they looked the other way. In 1994, the DNC abandoned its own procedure for vetting contributions for legality. We don't know exactly why this happened, but it's a good bet that it had something to do with the pressure coming from the White House to raise extraordinary amounts of money for the upcoming 1996 race. The culture of fund-raising rewards quantity, not care. It discourages close scrutiny and too many questions. The less you ask, the more you get. And given that there has been no real enforcement of these rules in the past, fund-raisers haven't lost a lot of sleep about contributions turning out to be tainted. If the money goes bad, you simply return it with the appropriate regretful noises. Question 2: Is the Lippo scandal an egregious example of a political quid pro quo? Answer: Definitely not. Examples of favors in exchanges for campaign contributions are plentiful. Consider, for instance, the relationship between Bob Dole and Chiquita. In 1995, Dole introduced legislation to impose trade sanctions on Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica--but not Honduras, where Dole's favorite bananas are grown. Why was a senator from Kansas so interested in bananas? It might have had something to do with Chiquita giving $677,000 to the Republican Party in the last campaign cycle or the generous offer by its CEO, Carl Lindner, to let Dole use the company jet. ("Sen. Dole has taken this position because it is right for America," Dole spokeswoman Christina Martin said earlier this year. "To suggest any other reason is totally absurd.") Or, there is the relationship between . This kind of treatment for big contributors is quite routine. In the Indonesia case, however, there is as yet no evidence that President Clinton did anything about his backer James Riady's concerns over trade with China and Indonesia beyond listening to them. Nor is there likely to be any evidence: Big foreign-policy decisions simply aren't susceptible to personal favoritism the way EPA regulations are. Question 3: Did John Huang break new ground in exploiting his government office for campaign-fund-raising purposes? Answer: No. The honor here actually goes to Robert Mosbacher, George Bush's secretary of commerce. As Bush's campaign chairman in 1988, Mosbacher invented the Team 100--a designation for the 249 corporate contributors who gave $100,000 or more in soft money to the RNC. When Mosbacher became secretary of commerce, members of the team were rewarded in various ways, including being invited by Mosbacher on trade missions around the world and, often, being given ambassadorships. ("That's part of what the system has been like for 160 years," Mosbacher said when questioned about it at the time--a judgment the press apparently agreed with.) Mosbacher's last act as commerce secretary was a tour of 30 cities to meet with business executives about how he could help them with exports. When he left the department shortly thereafter to run Bush's re-election campaign, he turned to the same executives for contributions. In his own use of the Commerce Department to dun corporations for campaign funds, Ron Brown was Mosbacher's disciple, though he proved to be an even greater talent than his master. As chairman of the DNC in the period leading up to the 1992 election, Brown followed the path laid by Tony Coehlo, the infamous chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Coehlo (as documented in Brooks Jackson's Honest Graft ) was the first to try to compete with the Republicans for corporate soft money. Brown devised for the DNC a "Managing Director" program to match Mosbacher's Republican "Team 100." When Brown became secretary of commerce in 1993, the managing directors were not forgotten. Fifteen DNC staff members went with him to Commerce, and they knew who the new administration's friends were. One of those who went with Brown was Melissa Moss, who took over the Office of Business Liaison at Commerce. This was the office that selected participants for the high-profile trade missions to such places as China and Indonesia, which became the focus of Brown's career at Commerce. On these trips, Brown functioned as a personal trade representative for companies like Boeing and AT&T. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal by a reporter who went along on Brown's China trip, seats on his plane were essentially sold off in exchange for soft-money contributions. John Huang was merely a cog in this machine. When he left the Lippo Group in 1994, Huang became a deputy assistant secretary in the International Trade Administration, the section of the Commerce Department that handles trade issues. Under oath, Huang has claimed he had only a "passive role" in the foreign trade missions--whatever that means. It all . But that's the Commerce Department Mosbacher created, and which Brown perfected. To present the Huang story as something new, reflecting the uniquely severe moral failings of William Jefferson Clinton, is absurd. So if, in fact, both parties are equally implicated in all the categories of campaign-financing sleaze raised by the Lippo case, why is the Indogate scandal such a big story? There are three reasons: reformers, reporters, and Republicans. Reformers are happy to have any good example to illustrate the evils of the system. Reporters are trying to compensate for suggestions that they are biased in favor of the Democrats. And Republicans, who have been the black hats of the campaign business since Watergate, are seizing an opportunity to finally turn the tables. The Republican outrage may be hypocritical, but in another sense, it is sincere. GOP leaders are furious at losing an advantage in corporate fund raising that dates back 100 years, to the election of 1896, when William McKinley's legendary money man Mark Hanna mobilized American business to stop the Democratic populist William Jennings Bryan. In the 1980s, the Republican advantage in total donations was still as high as 5-1 and never less than 3-1. In the 1992 election cycle, however, Ron Brown whittled it down to 3-2, thanks to corporate contributions. In 1996, the Democrats nearly caught up in the chief corporate category: soft money. With the help of Huang and others, they raised $102 million this year--almost as much as the Republicans' $121 million. The way they did it was simple: imitation.

test

49901

The Snare By RICHARD R. SMITH Illustrated by WEISS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none! I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt. Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity. Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth. We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface. The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before." Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles. "What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly. Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!" "If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface." "Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it." "Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit. Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!" I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth. "All right," I conceded. Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal. A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago." Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?" Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old." We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!" A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess. "There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening. We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible. "Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...." Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage. "You want to go in?" my wife asked. "Do you?" "Let's." I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller. Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway. For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky. The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!" "Are you all right?" "Yes." He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage.... ... and struck an invisible solid wall. My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight. " What happened? " "The door to this damned place closed," I explained. " What? " Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps. The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault. The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically. Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us. "Miller!" "Yes?" "See if you can get this thing open from the outside." I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls. Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak. "Miller, get help!" "I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently. "What happened to him?" "I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves. I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City.... Static grated against my ear drums. Static! I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City." "Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!" Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth." "It does," Marie agreed. "But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!" We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion. I deactivated my radio. Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond. Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies. We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door. We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last. We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks. Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding. I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet. "Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later." They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets. At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel. "The end of the line," he grunted. As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly. He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand. The door closed behind him. Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!" Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice. Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway. Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock. The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form. Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall. I put my arms around her, held her close. "Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly. For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon. We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship. My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality. I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps. We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly. Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered. This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms. I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly. The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column. "Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!" The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle. "Let's see how it tastes," I said. I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers. The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance. I tasted a small piece. "Chocolate! Just like chocolate!" Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid. "Milk!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her. The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen. Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing. Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap. The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position. "Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars. We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited. A few minutes later, Marie entered the room. I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it. She sat next to Verana. "What happened?" my wife asked. Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—" "Telepathic?" Verana interrupted. "Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!" "What memories?" I inquired. She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...." Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger. " Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!" "Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically. "Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!" "Start at the beginning," I suggested. He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! " "And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed. "Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us." "How long will the trip take?" I asked. "Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!" Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her. "Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—" "Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped. Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods." "Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly. "We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!" "It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room. Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!" Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls. "Where are you? Who are you?" "I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine." "Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?" "No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical. "What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously. "You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity." I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?" "The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship." "Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth." "It's useless," the ship warned us. For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal. Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on. The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor. After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space. We gave up. The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen." At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament. "Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!" "You sure?" I asked. "What?" " Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance." My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry. For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth. Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked. "Whiskey!" "My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained. I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine. We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles. "Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded. " Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?" "My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition." Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly. "Shtop me, then!" "I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language." It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment. After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana. I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons. Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one! I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be. They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon. The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever . I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning." When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully. I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before. I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair. Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness. "Awake, huh?" "What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him. "Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly. "It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me." "What's your plan?" I asked. He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution." I grunted my disgust. "The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation." "So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone. "The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?" "Right." "Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?" "What remark?" "It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?" I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so. "Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?" "Hell, I don't know," I confessed. "Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times." "Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him. " Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!" "So what?" He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—" "What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—" "I'll show you, Ed." He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath. "Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air. "Yes," the electronic brain replied. "Watch!" Kane tightened his fingers around my throat. Verana and Marie screamed shrilly. My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully. "Please stop," the machine pleaded. "What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!" The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions! "Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!" "No," the machine admitted. "If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !" The alien electronic brain was silent. By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled. "If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure." My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem. "Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later." A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness. "You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon." Kane released his grip on my throat. "See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?" I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.

test

61171

THE EXPENDABLES BY JIM HARMON It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide. I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing. "Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer." "They can't help me. I need an operator in your line." "I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal." Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?" "I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print." "I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy." You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat. "All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?" He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943." "Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me." "I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury." "I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could." "I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?" "Quicklime?" I suggested automatically. "What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...." "I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that." "I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government." "That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?" "Ways, Professor, ways." The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off. "Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you." "Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially. The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it. The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen. Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done. Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod. But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed. I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter. This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem. Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen. Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting. I cut corners. I bypassed complete safety circuits. I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy. I turned the machine on. The lights popped out. There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox. I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held. The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take. But there it was. The internal Scale showed zero. I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus. I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects. I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work. But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing "how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation. "Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum. "Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you." "I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub." "Why not? How could they trace them back to you?" "You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know." "Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator." "Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before." Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?" "Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?" Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics. "I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future." The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation. "I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months." "Or six million years." "You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor." I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do." Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?" "I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run." The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...." "Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...." "Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators." "There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine." "Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—" "What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically." Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial. "Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—" "You are ?" I said. He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock. "You are ." "I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything." "I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine." "Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?" "There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said. "You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one." "Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach." "Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably.... Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it. There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them. I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work. Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it. Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of. The closed sedan was warm, even in early December. Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered? Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street. "The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me. "What?" The firing squad? "The Expendable, of course." "Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it." He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined. A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight. "Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder. I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears. The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated. Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem." "Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...." "You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy." That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped. Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred. One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished. "What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine. Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved. "Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice. "He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area." "You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics." "No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works." "You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?" "Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ." My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld. I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it. "What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?" "This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat." "Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ." "Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ." "The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training. "You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine." "Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?" There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning. One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.) The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray. This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks. If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles. I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang. I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door. He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor." "The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully. "He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ." I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants." "The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe." "Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?" "Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too." "Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?" "I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me. "Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock." This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health. "But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?" "The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it." There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell. "That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?" I knew what to tell them. I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office. Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls. "My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?" I agreed that it was. She got her pad and pencil ready. "Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming. "Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now. "Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams. "Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field." I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even. I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him. I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness. Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth. "G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown. "Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?" "Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission." The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it. "Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked. "Not at all, sir," she said dreamily. "May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first." Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency. Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation." "You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?" "Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back." I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?" The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?" "I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more." The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly. I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?" "At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame." "Clever of them." "Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—" He paused dramatically. "Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!" "I agree," I said reluctantly. Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that." I waved his protests aside. "I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously." "Why?" the young man demanded. "Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell." "Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?" "No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design." "But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom. "Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."

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The Beast-Jewel of Mars By V. E. THIESSEN The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal. One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you. He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city . He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human. His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin. He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back. He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real." He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again. The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them. He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks. When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city. When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried, "Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound. A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers." The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!" The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes. When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city." The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe. The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city." He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back. And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame. He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city." And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate. He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again. He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all. He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions. And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted. The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again. He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been. Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left. The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again. He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?" The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled: "Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal." Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest. Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal. The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city. He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city. The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist. Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city." Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?" "Yes. The Legend said you'd be back." Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?" "Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze." Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?" "We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back." After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!" They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight. Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them. Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street. For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one." Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun." There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it. There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious. He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?" There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out. Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy." The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!" Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain. The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck. A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd. "Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes." Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence. She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking, "If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull. She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom. Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode. After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies. The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric." Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here." Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty. The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please." Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table. There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?" Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?" Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt." Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?" Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things." Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette. Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars." "This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked. "Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality." Eric stared. The idea was staggering. "This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused. "You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it." Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely. Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?" "Yes. The time has come." "But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building. Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here." Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city. "We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come." Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?" For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return." Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?" "Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire." "My brother, Garve. What about him?" "He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"

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THE HANGING STRANGER BY PHILIP K. DICK ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw it hanging in the town square. Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself! It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost. From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square. Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands. It was a body. A human body. "Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!" Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there." "See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!" Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there." "A reason! What kind of a reason?" Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?" Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?" "There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops." "They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there." "I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure." Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!" "Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee." "You mean it's been there all afternoon?" "Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed." Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention. "I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green. The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue. "For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear. Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean? And—why didn't anybody notice? He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed." Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins." "What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick." "The body. There in the park." "Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy." Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?" "Ed's not feeling well." Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—" "What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously. "The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!" More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?" "The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!" "Ed—" "Better get a doctor!" "He must be sick." "Or drunk." Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him. "Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!" The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce. "Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured. "Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—" "Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath. "1368 Hurst Road." "That's here in Pikeville?" "That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—" "Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded. "Where?" Loyce echoed. "You weren't in your shop, were you?" "No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement." "In the basement ?" "Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—" "Was anybody else down there with you?" "No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope. "You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?" After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation." "Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?" "It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see." Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level." "It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on. "I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?" The two cops said nothing. "I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—" "This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes." "I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—" Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running. They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops. They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part. Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting. There was no sound behind him. He had got away. He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars. And to his right—the police station. He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them. Them? Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance. And—something else. Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky. He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees. Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them. For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water. They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building. He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on. Were there more of them? It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being. On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others. Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them. Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry. Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them. He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom. Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street. Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus. The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family. Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her. A high school boy in jeans and black jacket. A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness. Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner. Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof. Maybe there were others. Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited. A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away. Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed? The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond. The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce. The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them. A look rich with meaning. Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open. "Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—" Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him. Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off. Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book. Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—" He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him. Had he made a mistake? But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his. "Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—" Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room. "Pull down the shades. Quick." Janet moved toward the window. "But—" "Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?" "Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?" Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room. "Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me." "Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?" "The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—" "What are you talking about?" "We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind." "My mind?" "Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!" Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane." "Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat." "My coat?" "We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that." White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat. "Where are we going?" Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it." "The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it." "I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?" Janet was dazed. "The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—" "Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far. "Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile." "Now?" Tommy's voice came. "Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you." Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—" "You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?" "He's coming." Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?" "We're going for a ride." "A ride? Where?" Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—" He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing? A stinger. Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down. Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug. It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving. The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone. Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps. A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town. The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted. But ahead of him lay Oak Grove. He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville. A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string. The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me." "What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?" Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up." The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor." "Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel. "We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away." They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face. "You don't believe me," Loyce said. The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly. Loyce sagged. "Thank God." "So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million." Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured. "What is it?" "About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time." "A long time?" "Thousands of years. I don't think it's new." "Why do you say that?" "When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—" "So?" "They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly." The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle." "They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated." "Why defeated?" "They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance." The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out." "Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?" "That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. " Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?" "To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped." Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap." "And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste." Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—" There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered. "Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly. As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner. "Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him. "Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished. At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze. From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind. What the hell was it? Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated. And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.

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Tea Tray in the Sky By EVELYN E. SMITH Illustrated by ASHMAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute! The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair. "Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé." A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog. "I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs. Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy. "Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother." "Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?" Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered." The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother." Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki." "No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life." Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover." "An Earth tabu?" "Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that." Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars. Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute). Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days? The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?" Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence. A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba." "Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know. The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?" "Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not." "And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury." "How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed. "Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability. "My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly. "I'm afraid I don't have any cards." "Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...." Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?" Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?" "Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?" The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here." "But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested, "with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales." Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?" "Of course not, but—" "Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?" "Certainly not, but—" "Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?" "No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away." With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped. Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out. Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!" "Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects. "The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids, "but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega." The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble." "Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you." He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats." "Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms." "Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?" "Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?" A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets. "Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad." "Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen." Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...." Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?" "Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?" "Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers." "Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway. "We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning." All the passengers cheered. "Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering." Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap. The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green. "Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man. "The Universe is expanding every minute." The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets. Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality. The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man. Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?" "Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece. "Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?" "But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?" Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?" "Well, yes. But those are different." "Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'" "But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?" "Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field." After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant. "That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained. Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped. A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair." Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist. "Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself." A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered: "Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor." "If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica." "Movid stars go to Mars." Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business. "Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi." "Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza." "All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth." "Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered. Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk." "But they have no feet." "That has nothing whatsoever to do with it." Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?" "Of course not," Michael whispered weakly. "Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara." After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians. "You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?" "Very quaint," Michael commented. Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...." "I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before." "Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea." "I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?" "The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...." "Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging." "That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family." "They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean." "More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would." The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices. "This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand." "The pictures in my history books—" Michael began. "Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir." "Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part." "Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble." He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air. "I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it." "Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too." "Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised. "It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away." A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square. "Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays." The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's." "This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—" "Listen, could we—" Michael began. "—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—" "By the way—" "It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking." "But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might." The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know." "A taxi? Isn't there one closer?" "Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive." They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief. Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire. Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby. "Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...." Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius." The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too: "Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa." "And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station." Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing "Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky. "They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?" "Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?" The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact." Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials." "Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...." " Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?" Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would." Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination. "This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you." Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?" "Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is." "Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood." There was a short cold silence. "You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury. "You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter." "Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are." "Much better," Michael agreed. "By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?" Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society." "On Talitha—" Carpenter began. "I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic." A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind. "When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius." The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella." The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return. "I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it." "I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!" "Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization." The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?" Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.

test

62212

PRISON PLANET By BOB TUCKER To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness. "Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?" Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it. "Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?" "No!" Roberds screamed. Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door. "Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly. "No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night. When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair. "Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?" "True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!" Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door. "Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!" The nurse came out of the door. "How is she?" Roberds asked. "Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...." "We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock." "I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?" "Eight days, in that ship." Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney. "Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked. "We call him Rat," Roberds said. She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?" Peterson opened his mouth. "Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell." "Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?" Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?" Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL. "As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here." "But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution." The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him." The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation. "Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson." "They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right." Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed." Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air. "Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!" Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?" "I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled. Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted. Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set." Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding. "Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away. Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again. "Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill. "Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?" Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky. He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words. "Well, can you?" she demanded. "Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?" "Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you." Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?" Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?" Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again. "When?" he whispered. "As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again. "Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards. She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment." "No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched. "Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly. "Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone. To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety. Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again. "I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—" "—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain. "Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it." He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch." She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock. "Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks. "Judith?" she asked. "Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe." "No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her. "Hey! Where are you going now?" "To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back. "Where has he gone?" Judith called. "Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you." The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock. "I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally. "This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law." "Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home." "How about these men that live and work here?" "They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without." "Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!" Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort. "Gray?" Judith asked fearfully. "Yes?" "Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?" Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned. "Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed. "I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney." "But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?" "Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles. "And Peterson?" she prompted. "Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him." " Fan him? I don't understand." "Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away. He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping. "You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up. "Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!" Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes. Rat unlocked the master level and shoved! "Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her. "Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign. "Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side. "That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel. "Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others. "That isn't doing either of them any good!" Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing. "Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out." "Don't know it," he said briefly. "Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded. Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?" Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it. "No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix." "Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?" Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars. "You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know." "So you?" "So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered. "Cold?" he inquired concernedly. "On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her. "Leave on! Hot out here." "But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!" "No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?" Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact. "What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean." He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?" "Patti." "Pretty, Patti." "No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?" "Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here." "And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?" Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring. "But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?" He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney, "yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think." They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face. "I have to have a drink." Rat stared at her without answer. "I said, I have to have a drink!" "Heard you." "Well...?" "Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer." She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap. They stood there glaring idiotically at each other. She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet. "Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!" Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something. "No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!" "But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel. "Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m." "H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?" "Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt. "H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded. Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare. No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up. Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse. "Flip-flop," he laconically explained. "For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis. "And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat. Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets. Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth. "Sorry!" Rat whispered. "Shut up and drive!" she cried. "Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain. Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers. Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls. Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving! "How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes. She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!" A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair. Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up. "Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?" "I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick." "I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?" "Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake." " Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!" "He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?" He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders. "Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison. "You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?" Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot. "Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?" Rat shook his head and said nothing. "But Roberds said eight days, and he—" "—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed. "Six days, no brake. No." "I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!" Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think." "You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land." "Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret. "Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?" "I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too. The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position. "Earth!" she shouted. "Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?" "Just name it!" "Not drink long time. Some water?" Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry. "There isn't any left, Rat." Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her. She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face. "Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?" He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen." "But why didn't you explain?" He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after." Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship." "They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now." The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way. "Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat." Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—" "Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.

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POTENTIAL ENEMY by Mack Reynolds [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CAESAR HAD THE SAME PROBLEM AND NEVER SOLVED IT. LORD HELP US IF IT JUST CAN'T BE DONE! Alexander the Great had not dreamed of India, nor even Egypt, when he embarked upon his invasion of the Persian Empire. It was not a matter of being like the farmer: "I ain't selfish, all I want is the land that jines mine." It was simply that after regaining the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Darius, he could not stop. He could not afford to have powerful neighbors that might threaten his domains tomorrow. So he took Egypt, and the Eastern Satrapies, and then had to continue to India. There he learned of the power of Cathay, but an army mutiny forestalled him and he had to return to Babylon. He died there while making plans to attack Arabia, Carthage, Rome. You see, given the military outlook, he could not afford powerful neighbors on his borders; they might become enemies some day. Alexander had not been the first to be faced with this problem, nor was he the last. So it was later with Rome, and later with Napoleon, and later still with Adolf the Aryan, and still later— It isn't travel that is broadening, stimulating, or educational. Not the traveling itself. Visiting new cities, new countries, new continents, or even new planets, yes . But the travel itself, no . Be it by the methods of the Twentieth Century—automobile, bus, train, or aircraft—or be it by spaceship, travel is nothing more than boring. Oh, it's interesting enough for the first few hours, say. You look out the window of your car, bus, train, or airliner, or over the side of your ship, and it's very stimulating. But after that first period it becomes boring, monotonous, sameness to the point of redundance. And so it is in space. Markham Gray, free lance journalist for more years than he would admit to, was en route from the Neptune satellite Triton to his home planet, Earth, mistress of the Solar System. He was seasoned enough as a space traveler to steel himself against the monotony with cards and books, with chess problems and wire tapes, and even with an attempt to do an article on the distant earthbase from which he was returning for the Spacetraveler Digest . When all these failed, he sometimes spent a half hour or so staring at the vision screen which took up a considerable area of one wall of the lounge. Unless you had a vivid imagination of the type which had remained with Markham Gray down through the years, a few minutes at a time would have been enough. With rare exception, the view on the screen seemed almost like a still; a velvety blackness with pin-points of brilliant light, unmoving, unchanging. But even Markham Gray, with his ability to dream and to discern that which is beyond, found himself twisting with ennui after thirty minutes of staring at endless space. He wished that there was a larger number of passengers aboard. The half-dozen businessmen and their women and children had left him cold and he was doing his best to avoid them. Now, if there had only been one good chess player— Co-pilot Bormann was passing through the lounge. He nodded to the distinguished elderly passenger, flicked his eyes quickly, professionally, over the vision screen and was about to continue on his way. Gray called idly, "Hans, I thought the space patrols very seldom got out here." "Practically never, sir," the other told him politely, hesitating momentarily. Part of the job was to be constantly amiable, constantly watchful of the passengers out here in deep space—they came down with space cafard at the drop of a hat. Markham Gray reminded Bormann of pictures of Benjamin Franklin he'd seen in history books, and ordinarily he didn't mind spending a little time now and then talking things over with him. But right now he was hoping the old duffer wasn't going to keep him from the game going on forward with Captain Post and the steward. "Just noticed one on the screen," the elderly journalist told him easily. The co-pilot smiled courteously. "You must have seen a meteorite, sir. There aren't any—" Markham Gray flushed. "I'm not as complete a space neophyte as your condescending air would indicate, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact, I'll stack my space-months against yours any day." Bormann said soothingly, "It's not that, sir. You've just made a mistake. If a ship was within reasonable distance, the alarms would be sounding off right now. But that's not all, either. We have a complete record of any traffic within a considerable distance, and I assure you that—" Markham Gray pointed a finger at the lower left hand corner of the screen. "Then what is that, Lieutenant?" he asked sarcastically. The smile was still on the co-pilot's face as he turned and followed the direction of the other's finger. The smile faded. "I'll be a makron !" he blurted. Spinning on his heel, he hurried forward to the bridge, muttering as he went. The older man snorted with satisfaction. Actually, he shouldn't have been so snappy with the young man; he hated to admit he was growing cranky with age. He took up his half completed manuscript again. He really should finish this article, though, space knew, he hadn't enough material for more than a few paragraphs. Triton was a barren satellite if he'd ever seen one—and he had. He had almost forgotten the matter ten minutes later when the ship's public address system blurted loudly. BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! ALL CREW MEMBERS TO EMERGENCY STATIONS. ALL PASSENGERS IMMEDIATELY TO THEIR QUARTERS. BATTLE STATIONS! Battle Stations? Markham Gray was vaguely familiar with the fact that every Solar System spacecraft was theoretically a warcraft in emergency, but it was utterly fantastic that— He heaved himself to his feet, grunting with the effort, and, disregarding the repeated command that passengers proceed to their quarters, made his way forward to the bridge, ignoring the hysterical confusion in passengers and crew members hurrying up and down the ship's passageways. It was immediately obvious, there at the craft's heart, that this was no farce, at least not a deliberate one. Captain Roger Post, youthful officer in command of the Neuve Los Angeles , Lieutenant Hans Bormann and the two crew members on watch were white-faced and shaken, momentarily confused in a situation which they had never expected to face. The two officers stood before the bridge vision screen watching, wide-eyed, that sector of space containing the other vessel. They had enlarged it a hundred-fold. At the elderly journalist's entrance, the skipper had shot a quick, irritated glance over his shoulder and had begun to snap something; he cut it off. Instead, he said, "When did you first sight the alien ship, Mr. Gray?" " Alien? " "Yes, alien. When did you first sight it? It is obviously following us in order to locate our home planet." There was extreme tension in the captain's voice. Markham Gray felt cold fingers trace their way up his back. "Why, why, I must have noticed it several hours ago, Captain. But ... an alien !... I...." He peered at the enlarged craft on the screen. "Are you sure, Captain? It seems remarkably like our own. I would say—" The captain had spun back around to stare at the screen again, as though to reassure himself of what he had already seen. "There are no other ships in the vicinity," he grated, almost as though to himself. "Besides that, as far as I know, and I should know, there are no Earth craft that look exactly like that. There are striking similarities, I'll admit, to our St. Louis class scouts, but those jets on the prow—there's nothing like them either in existence or projected." His voice rose in an attempt to achieve decisiveness, "Lieutenant Bormann, prepare to attack." Suddenly, the telviz blared. Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Be unafraid. We are not hostile. There was quiet on the bridge of the earth ship. Screaming quiet. It was seemingly hours before they had recovered even to the point of staring at one another. Hans Bormann gasped finally, unbelievingly, "How could they possibly know the name of our ship? How could they possibly know the Amer-English language?" The captain's face was white and frozen. He said, so quietly that they could hardly make it out, "That's not all. Our alarms still haven't been touched off, and our estimators aren't functioning; we don't know how large they are nor how far away. It's unheard of—.Somehow they've completely disrupted our instruments." Markham Gray followed the matter with more than average interest, after their arrival at the New Albuquerque spaceport. Not that average interest wasn't high. Finally man had come in contact with another intelligence. He had been dreading it, fearing it, for decades; now it was here. Another life form had conquered space, and, seemingly, had equipment, in some respects at least, superior to humanity's. The court martial of Captain Roger Post had been short and merciless. Free access to the trial had been given to the press and telviz systems, and the newscasts had carried it in its entirety, partially to stress to the public mind the importance of the situation, and partially as a warning to other spacemen. Post had stood before the raised dais upon which were seated SupSpaceCom Michell and four other high-ranking officers and heard the charge read—failure to attack the alien craft, destroy it, and thus prevent the aliens—wherever they might be from—returning to their own world and reporting the presence of man in the galaxy. Markham Gray, like thousands of others, had sat on the edge of his chair in the living room of his small suburban home, and followed the trial closely on his telviz. SupSpaceCom Michell had been blunt and ruthless. He had rapped out, bitingly, "Roger Post, as captain of the Neuve Los Angeles , why did you not either destroy the alien craft, or, if you felt it too strong for your ship, why did you not blast off into space, luring it away from your home planet?" Post said hesitantly, "I didn't think it necessary, sir. His attitude was—well, of peace. It was as if we were two ships that had met by chance and dipped their flags in the old manner and passed on to their different destinations. They even were able to telviz us a message." The SupSpaceCom snapped, "That was undoubtedly a case of telepathy. The alien is equipped in some manner to impose thoughts upon the human brain. You thought the telviz was used; actually the alien wasn't speaking Amer-English, he was simply forcing thoughts into your minds." Markham Gray, watching and listening to this over his set, shook his head in dissatisfaction. As always, the military mind was dull and unreceptive. The ridiculousness of expecting Post to blast off into space in an attempt to fool the other craft in regard to his home planet was obvious. The whole affair had taken place within the solar system; obviously the alien would know that one of Sol's nine major planets was mankind's home. Finding out which one wouldn't be too difficult a job. Roger Post was saying hesitantly, "Then it is assumed that the alien craft wasn't friendly?" SupSpaceCom Michell indicated his disgust with an impatient flick of his hand. "Any alien is a potential enemy, Post; that should be elementary. And a potential enemy is an enemy in fact. Even though these aliens might seem amiable enough today, how do we know they will be in the future—possibly in the far future? There can be no friendship with aliens. We can't afford to have neighbors; we can't afford to be encircled by enemies." "Nor even friends?" Captain Post had asked softly. Michell glared at his subordinate. "That is what it amounts to, Captain; and the thing to remember is that they feel the same way. They must! They must seek us out and destroy us completely and as quickly as possible. By the appearance of things, and partially through your negligence, they've probably won the first round. They know our location; we don't know theirs." The supreme commander of Earth's space forces dropped that point. "Let us go back again. When you received this telepathic message—or whatever it was—what was your reaction? Did it seem friendly, domineering, or what?" Roger Post stood silent for a moment. Finally he answered, "Sir, I still think it was the telviz, rather than a telepathic communication, but the ... the tone of voice seemed to give me the impression of pitying." "Pitying!" Michell ejaculated. The captain was nervous but determined. "Yes, sir. I had the distinct feeling that the being that sent the message felt sorry for us." The SupSpaceCom's face had gone red with indignation. It was three years before another of the aliens was sighted. Three hurried, crowded, harassed years during which all the Solar System's resources were devoted to building and arming a huge space fleet and rushing space defenses. The total wars of the Twentieth Century paled in comparison to the all out efforts made to prepare for this conflict. The second view of the alien ship was similar to the first. This, time the Pendleton , a four-man scout returning to the Venus base after a patrol in the direction of Sirius, held the intruder in its viewer for a full five minutes. Once again, no estimation of its distance nor size could be made. All instruments pertaining to such detection seemed to fail to function properly. And again the alien had sent a message—seemingly, at least, by telviz. We are no danger to you, mankind. Seek your destiny in peace. Your troubles are from within. The Pendleton would have attempted to follow the strange craft, but her fuel tanks were nearly dry and she had to proceed to Venus. Her captain's report made a sensation. In a way, the whole business had been a good thing for Markham Gray. As a free lancing journalist, he'd had a considerable advantage. First, he was more than usually informed on space travel and the problems relating to it, second, he had been present at—in fact, had made himself—the first sighting of the aliens. His articles were in continuous demand in both magazines and newspaper supplements; editors clamored for additional material from his voco-typer. There was but one complaint against his copy—it wasn't alarmist enough, sensational enough. Humanity had been whipped into a state of hysteria, an emotional binge, and humanity loved it. And it was there that Markham Gray refused to go along. He had agreed with poor Captain Post, now serving a life sentence in the Martian prison camps; there had been no sign of hostility from the alien craft. It was man who was preparing for war—and Gray knew of no period in history in which preparations for war did not eventually culminate in one. So it was not really strange that it was he the aliens chose to contact. It came in the early hours of the morning. He awakened, not without a chill of fear, the sound of his telviz set in his ears. He had left it turned off, he knew that. He shook his head to clear it, impatient of the fact that with advancing years it was taking an increasing time to become alert after sleep. He had not caught the message. For a brief moment he thought the sound had been a dream. Then the telviz spoke again. The screen was blank. It said, You are awake, Mr. Gray? He stared at it, uncomprehending. He said, "I ... I don't understand." Then, suddenly, he did understand, as though by an inspired revelation. Why they were able to speak Amer-English. Why their ship looked like a Terran one. Why they had been able to 'disrupt' the Earth ships instruments. He said haltingly, "Why are you here?" We are familiar with your articles. You alone, Mr. Gray, seem at least to seek understanding. Before we left, we felt it our duty to explain our presence and our purpose—that is, partially. "Yes," he said. Then, in an attempt to check the conclusion at which he had just arrived, he added, "You are going from the Solar System—leaving your home for a new one?" There was a long silence. Finally: As we said, we were going to explain partially our presence and purpose, but obviously you know more than we had thought. Would you mind revealing the extent of your knowledge? Gray reached to the foot of the bed and took up his night robe; partly because it was chilly, partly to give himself time to consider his answer. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that. He was alone in this small house; he had no knowledge of their intentions toward him. But he had gone too far now. He said, "Not at all. I am not sure of where we stand, but things should be much clearer, shortly. First of all, your spaceships are tiny. Probably less than ten pounds." About four, Mr. Gray. "Which explains why our instruments did not record them; the instruments weren't disrupted, your ships were really too small to register. That's where we made our first mistake. We assumed, for no valid reason, that you were approximately our own size. We were willing to picture you as non-human and possessing limbs, organs, and even senses different from ours; but we have pictured 'aliens', as we've been calling you, as approximately our own size. Actually, you must be quite tiny." Quite tiny, Markham Gray. Although, of course, the way we think of it is that you are quite huge. He was becoming more confident now; widely awake, it was less strange to hear the words come from his commonplace home model telviz set. "Our second mistake was in looking for you throughout space," he said softly. There was hesitation again, then, And why was that a mistake, Markham Gray? Gray wet his lips. He might be signing his death warrant, but he couldn't stop now. "Because you are not really 'aliens,' but of Earth itself. Several facts point that way. For instance, your ships are minute models of Earth ships, or, rather, of human ships. You have obviously copied them. Then, too, you have been able to communicate with humans too easily. An alien to our world would have had much more trouble. Our ways, our methods of thinking, are not strange to you." You have discovered a secret which has been kept for many centuries, Markham Gray. He was more at ease now; somehow there was no threat in the attitude of the other. Gray said, "The hardest thing for me to understand is why it has been kept a secret. Obviously, you are a tiny form of Earth life, probably an insect, which has progressed intellectually as far beyond other insect forms as man beyond other mammals. Why have you kept this a secret from humans?" You should be able to answer that yourself, Mr. Gray. As we developed, we were appalled by the only other form of life on our planet with a developed intelligence. Why, not even your own kind is safe from your bloodlust. The lesser animals on Earth have been either enslaved by man—or slaughtered to extinction. And even your fellows in the recent past were butchered; man killed man wholesale. Do you blame us for keeping our existence a secret? We knew that the day humans discovered there was another intelligence on Earth they would begin making plans to dominate or, even more likely, to destroy us. Our only chance was to find some refuge away from Earth. That is why we began to search the other stars for a planet similar to this and suitable to our form of life. "You could have fought back, had we attempted to destroy you," Gray said uncomfortably. The next words were coldly contemptuous. We are not wanton killers, like man. We have no desire to destroy. Gray winced and changed the subject. "You have found your new planet?" At last. We are about to begin transportation of our population to the new world. For the first time since our ancestors became aware of the awful presence of man on the Earth, we feel that we can look forward to security. Markham Gray remained quiet for a long time. "I am still amazed that you were able to develop so far without our knowledge," he said finally. There was an edge of amusement in the answering thought. We are very tiny, Mr. Gray. And our greatest efforts have always been to keep from under man's eyes. We have profited greatly, however, by our suitability to espionage; little goes on in the human world of which we don't know. Our progress was greatly aided by our being able to utilize the science that man has already developed. You've noted, for instance, how similar our space ships are to your own. Gray nodded to himself. "But I'm also impressed by the manner in which you have developed some mechanical device to duplicate human speech. That involved original research." At any rate, neither man nor we need dread the future any longer. We have escaped the danger that overhung us, and you know now that we are no alien enemies from space threatening you. We wish you well, mankind; perhaps the future will see changes in your nature. It is in this friendly hope that we have contacted humanity through you, Mr. Gray. The elderly journalist said quietly, "I appreciate your thoughtfulness and hope you are correct. Good luck to you in your new world." Thank you, Markham Gray, and goodbye. The set was suddenly quiet again. Markham Gray stood before the assembled Military Council of the Solar System. He had told his story without interruption to this most powerful body on Earth. They listened to him in silence. When he had finished, he waited for their questions. The first came from SupSpaceCom Michell. He said, thoughtfully, "You believe their words to be substantially correct, Gray?" "I believe them to be entirely truthful, your excellency," the journalist told him sincerely. "Then they are on the verge of leaving the Earth and removing to this other planet in some other star system?" "That is their plan." The SupSpaceCom mused aloud. "We'll be able to locate them when they blast off en masse. Their single ships are so small that they missed being observed, but a mass flight we'll be able to detect. Our cruisers will be able to follow them all the way, blasting them as they go. If any get through to their new planet, we'll at least know where they are and can take our time destroying it." The President of the Council added thoughtfully, "Quite correct, Michell. And in the early stages of the fight, we should be able to capture some of their ships intact. As soon as we find what kind of insect they are, our bacteriologists will be able to work on a method to eliminate any that might remain on Earth." Markham Gray's face had paled in horror. "But why?" he blurted. "Why not let them go in peace? All they've wanted for centuries is to escape us, to have a planet of their own." SupSpaceCom Michell eyed him tolerantly. "You seem to have been taken in, Mr. Gray. Once they've established themselves in their new world, we have no idea of how rapidly they might develop and how soon they might become a threat. Even though they may be peaceful today, they are potential enemies tomorrow. And a potential enemy is an enemy, who must be destroyed." Gray felt sickness well through him "But ... but this policy.... What happens when man finally finds on his borders a life form more advanced than he—an intelligence strong enough to destroy rather than be destroyed?" The tolerance was gone now. The SupSpaceCom said coldly, "Don't be a pessimistic defeatist, Gray." He turned to the admirals and generals of his staff. "Make all preparations for the attack, gentlemen."

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The Puzzle in the Pond 1 CHAPTER I A Stolen Typewriter “Here’s something Miss Pringle can use!” Judy ran her fingers over the tiny, embossed Reward of Merit card as if she couldn’t bear to part with it even for the short time it would be on exhibit at the Roulsville library. “Mrs. Wheatley is still Miss Pringle to you, isn’t she?” asked Peter Dobbs, smiling at his young wife as she knelt beside the open drawer of the old chest where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored. 2 “I do think of her as Miss Pringle,” confessed Judy, “and she probably thinks of me as that noisy Judy Bolton. Prim Miss Pringle is what I used to call her. She left everything in such perfect order, it’s hard for me to believe she and Bob Wheatley lived in our house for two whole months. We won’t ever rent it again, will we, Peter?” “You’re not asking me to promise we won’t, are you?” he countered. “You know how I feel about promises.” “You’re right, too,” declared Judy, reaching into the drawer for another one of Grandmother Smeed’s treasured keepsakes. “Here’s a sewing card worked in cross-stitch. It says: ‘ Promise Little. Do Much. ’ Do you think it would do for the September exhibit?” “I should think so,” Peter replied thoughtfully. “A maxim like that would do for any time of the year. Does the library plan to exhibit a few of these things each month?” “Yes, but just for the school year. Miss Pringle—I mean Mrs. Wheatley says she wants me to arrange them in that little glass case near the library door. These reward-of-merit cards used to be given out at school when Grandma was a little girl. The other card was a sewing lesson. ‘Promise little. Do much,’” Judy repeated, “but how much can a person do in a day? Maybe I won’t try to sort all these treasures this morning.” “You’ve made a good start. I wish I could stay and help you. I always liked treasure hunting,” Peter confessed, “but Uncle Sam expects me to hunt criminals today. We’ll be using an official car, so I’ll leave the Beetle for you to transport your exhibit to the library if you do get it ready. ’Bye, Angel. See you at six.” “You hope,” Judy added as he bent to kiss her. 3 Peter’s time was not his own. Working out of the Resident FBI Agency in the Farringdon Post Office, he might be sent anywhere in the territory. His assignment now was to round up the Joe Mott gang. Judy knew that much, although his work was confidential. It was also dangerous. Each time he left the house she breathed a little prayer for his safe return. “Take care,” was what she usually said, but in her heart the words meant, “Take care of our future. Let all our dreams for our married life in this house come true.” The house had been willed to Judy by her grandmother, and it was so sturdy and well built that she felt sure it would stand there on the slope overlooking Dry Brook as long as the hills themselves. Peter had left the stair door open, and soon Judy heard Blackberry padding up to keep her company. He looked around, the way cats will, and then came into the storeroom to see what Judy was doing. “Hi, Blackberry! You can’t play with these things,” she told him as she continued sorting and arranging the cards that were to be exhibited at the library. The theme for September would be school. She found a few Hallowe’en things and a Columbus Day card which she put aside for October. There were turkeys and prayers of Thanksgiving for November, a pile of Christmas things for December, and a stack of old calendars for January. The stack grew higher and higher. 4 “I do believe Grandma saved a calendar for every year. This is wonderful,” Judy said to herself. “I’ll find some recent calendars and complete the collection. It will be just perfect for the January exhibit.” The library was new, and the built-in exhibit cases were still empty. Nearly all the buildings in Roulsville were new since the flood that had swept the valley and started Judy on the trail of her first mystery. Her own home had been swept away, and her father, Dr. Bolton, had been obliged to move to Farringdon where he still lived and practiced. Only her grandmother’s house, two miles above the broken dam, had stayed the same. “Maybe that’s why I love it,” she thought. And yet she and Peter had made changes. It was a rambling old farmhouse too big for just the two of them so only the downstairs rooms had been changed. Up here in the attic nothing had been disturbed except by Blackberry as he played with the spools in Judy’s sewing room or searched for mice in the other two rooms where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored. She liked having him for company as she worked. Attics and black cats seemed to go together. Judy smiled at this thought. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that at first she didn’t hear the front doorbell ringing downstairs. It rang again more insistently, and she gathered Blackberry in her arms and hurried down the two flights of stairs. It wouldn’t do to leave the cat alone among the things she had collected for the exhibit. 5 “I can’t trust you,” she told him, “even if you are a famous cat.” Blackberry wore a life-saving medal on his collar, and just recently he had worked for the government, or so Judy insisted, ridding the Capitol Building of mice. But when she opened the door he fled through it to prowl around outside like any ordinary cat. The cat startled Holly Potter, Judy’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, who had rung the bell. Obviously she had been running at break-neck speed along the shortcut from her house to Judy’s. “What took you so long? I thought you’d never answer the bell. Quick!” she urged breathlessly. “Maybe we can still head off that green car! There’s a thief in it. He stole my typewriter!” “Your typewriter?” gasped Judy. “Yes, the one you gave me for my birthday. Remember when we traded birthdays so mine wouldn’t come on Christmas? I loved that typewriter, and now—” “We’ll try and get it back,” Judy reassured her. “Come on, Holly!” They were off down the road in the Beetle before Holly had finished telling Judy which way the green car went. “Try Farringdon,” she suggested. “You could see it from the top of the hill if it went toward Farringdon, couldn’t you?” “That would depend on how fast he was going, I should think, but we’ll try it,” Judy promised. 6 “Quick!” Holly urged breathlessly. 7 She turned left at the main road and sped up the long slope out of Dry Brook Hollow. At the top of the hill the world seemed to end but, instead of driving on into the sky the way it looked as if she might, Judy drove down again with miles and miles of winding road ahead of her. There wasn’t a green car in sight. “I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” Judy began. “But I’m sure he went this way,” Holly insisted. “I would have seen him myself if he’d turned toward Roulsville. You know how our road angles off in that direction. Well, I thought if I raced along the shortcut and we took your road maybe we could head him off if he turned toward Farringdon. I have to get my typewriter back. Can’t you drive a little faster?” “Not without turning the car over. We’ll pick up speed on the straight road. Then, if we can’t find him, we’ll report the stolen typewriter when we get to Farringdon. Did he take anything else?” Judy asked. “No, just the typewriter.” “That’s strange.” Judy couldn’t quite picture a thief running into Holly’s house, grabbing her typewriter, and not touching anything else. She had a rare old paperweight and a brand-new tape recorder in the first-floor room she called her study. Either of these things would have been worth more than her typewriter, to say nothing of the valuables stored in what she had once called her forbidden chest. 8 “There was nothing strange about it,” declared Holly. “He would have taken more if I hadn’t surprised him and called Ruth. She was busy with the baby and didn’t pay any attention. Doris had just left in her car—” “That’s it!” Judy interrupted. “The thief probably saw your sister Doris leaving and figured you were all out.” “Well, we weren’t. I was there, and I saw him run out of the house toward a green car. Please drive faster, Judy! I have to get my typewriter back.” And suddenly, like rain from a clear blue sky, Holly burst into tears. She was crying over more important things than a stolen typewriter, Judy knew. It wasn’t easy living with a married sister whose whole interest centered on her own husband and baby. Holly’s other sister was on her way to a teaching job at some private school in Maine. The girls’ uncle had died while Judy and Peter were in Washington. Holly said she had never felt more lost and alone. “First it was my parents and then Uncle David. It’s always this way,” she sobbed. “I told my sisters I wouldn’t dare love them. It’s bad luck for me to love anybody. Even the things I love have to be taken.” “We’ll find your typewriter,” Judy resolved as she drove on toward Farringdon as fast as safety allowed. 9 CHAPTER II Help for Holly Farringdon was a much larger town than Roulsville. Actually, it was a small city and the county seat of a hilly county in northern Pennsylvania. The courthouse, tall and imposing with its clock tower, stood at the corner of Main and Grove streets. Just opposite was the office of the Farringdon Daily Herald where Judy’s brother Horace worked as a reporter. Farther up Grove Street was Dr. Bolton’s combined home and office. “Which way shall we turn?” Judy asked when they came to the corner. Holly shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe my typewriter wasn’t stolen after all.” 10 “ What? ” Judy was so surprised that she nearly hit the curb as they turned the corner. “If we aren’t following a typewriter thief, then what are we doing in Farringdon?” “We are—I mean we were following that green car, and I think my typewriter is in it. It’s just that I—I mean I haven’t told you everything.” “I should say you haven’t,” Judy agreed. “Maybe Horace would help us for the sake of the story.” “I’d be glad to have his help,” declared Holly almost too enthusiastically. “There he is now, walking down Grove Street. Oh dear! Is that Honey with him?” “It usually is,” replied Judy. “They’re practically engaged, you know.” “No, I didn’t know. Good things happen to everyone but me,” was Holly’s doleful comment. “I’ll probably be an old maid and live all alone without even a cat for company.” “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Judy hailed her brother. He and Peter’s sister came over to the side of the car. “Holly thinks her typewriter was stolen,” Judy explained. “On top of all the other trouble she’s had, this was just too much. Have you seen a green car?” “Several of them,” replied Horace. “They’re quite common, or haven’t you noticed? Come to think of it, a green car did roar up Main Street about ten minutes ago. The driver was a boy of about sixteen. Dark hair, striped T-shirt—” “He’s the one,” Holly interrupted. “Do you think we can still overtake him?” 11 “We can try,” replied Judy, “but I’m not making any rash promises. Didn’t you just tell me you’re not sure he is the thief? You didn’t actually see him take your typewriter, did you?” “No, but I did see him running toward that green car, and when I turned around my desk top was empty. Ruth said maybe Doris took it. You know the way sisters are, always borrowing things without asking. But I don’t believe it. Doris knows I need my typewriter. Please drive on, Judy,” Holly pleaded. “We can’t let that boy get away with it.” “I’m afraid he did get away with it,” Horace told her. “If he did take your typewriter, he must be half-way to Ulysses with it by now.” “That’s the town where we turned off when we visited the Jewell sisters,” Honey put in, “on our secret quest, didn’t we, Judy?” “I heard about that. You two girls have all the fun,” Holly complained. “Fun!” Judy echoed, remembering how frightened she and Honey had been. “If that’s fun—” She shivered, and her voice trailed off into thoughts of their latest mystery. “We were drenched to the skin and that criminal, Joe Mott, was after us. I’m glad he’s back in prison. I can’t understand it, though,” Honey continued in a puzzled voice. “Aldin Launt, that artist who works at the Dean Studios, was never picked up. He works right near me, and every time he passes my desk I get the shivers. I thought Peter was going to arrest him.” 12 “So did I,” agreed Judy, “but maybe he’s being watched in the hope he will lead the FBI to the rest of the gang. Peter’s work is so secret that half the time he can’t even discuss it with me.” “Please don’t discuss it now,” implored Holly. “If we’re going to follow that green car—” “You’ll never catch him,” Horace predicted, “and how would you get your typewriter back if you did? A couple of girls couldn’t handle a thief, especially if he’s got a gun on him. I don’t suppose you can make a federal case out of it, but couldn’t you report it to the local police? I’ll call them right now if you say the word.” “What do you think, Judy?” Holly asked. “I’d do it if I were you, Holly,” she advised. “Okay, then,” Horace said with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “Just give me all the details. Then we’ll relax and let the police handle it. Honey and I were on our way to lunch. How about joining us?” Judy looked up at the courthouse clock. “Oh dear! The morning’s gone. I didn’t think it was lunchtime already. I am hungry. Aren’t you, Holly?” The younger girl insisted that she couldn’t eat a thing, but once they were inside the restaurant she changed her mind. “I guess I could eat a hamburger,” she conceded. 13 While Horace went to telephone, the three girls ordered lunch. Holly was still jumpy. She kept tossing her mane of thick brown hair like a restless colt. She wore it perfectly straight in a long pony tail. Judy’s red curls were cut a little shorter than usual, but Honey had let her lovely honey-colored hair grow long to please Horace. Today she wore it loose about her shoulders. The three girls were very different in appearance, but they had one thing in common. All three of them adored Judy’s brother, Horace Bolton. He was a shy-appearing young man. To look at him, no one would suspect that he had once startled the town of Roulsville out of its complacency by racing through the streets on Judy’s ginger colt and crying out, “The dam is breaking! Run for the hills.” Thinking back, Judy realized that since Horace had become a hero, he had changed. There wasn’t a note of timidity in his voice as he talked with the police officer who later came in and quietly seated himself at their table. It was Holly who was frightened. “I—I didn’t think they’d send a policeman,” were her first words. “I can’t be sure of anything. Maybe it’s all a big mistake.” “We’ll take that chance,” the officer replied, smiling as he wrote out his report. “Tell you what, Judy,” Horace suggested as they were leaving the restaurant. “Why don’t you and Holly drive on a ways? Maybe you’ll see that green car parked somewhere along the road. I’ll finish up a little job I’m doing and tell Mr. Lee this looks like a story. He’ll give me the afternoon off to follow it up.” “What about you, Honey? Do you have to go back to work?” asked Judy. 14 “Oh, I guess Mr. Dean would give me the afternoon off if I asked him. I can’t do any work with all that hammering going on anyway. Where shall we meet you?” Honey asked. “At the beaver dam!” exclaimed Judy, suddenly enthusiastic. “Remember, Honey? Violetta said she’d show it to us. I have my camera in the car. Maybe we could take pictures of the beavers.” “It’s a date! Violetta is the younger of the two Jewell sisters,” Honey explained to Holly, “though neither of them is young. They’re such dears! They live in one of the oldest houses in this section of Pennsylvania. It’s like stepping back in time just to visit them.” “I’ll ask them if they have anything for the library exhibit. I have the job of choosing the displays for those new cases in the Roulsville library,” Judy explained. “All right, Horace, we’ll see you and Honey at the beaver dam.” 15 CHAPTER III A Rude Shopkeeper “I hope the beaver dam holds better than that one just above Roulsville,” Holly commented as they started off again. “We have to pass it on the way to school. I remember how it was last term. The boys and girls in the school bus quiet down fast if they happen to glance out the window and see those big pieces of broken concrete. A lot of them lost their homes when that dam broke, just the way you did, Judy. Did you go back afterwards to see if anything could be saved?” 16 “We went back too late, I guess. We didn’t find much of anything. There’s always some looting after a big disaster like that. People are too interested in making sure all their loved ones are safe to worry about their possessions.” Judy paused. She had been younger than Holly was now when the Bolton family’s home in Roulsville had been swept away in the flood, but it still hurt to think about it. “Dad had to treat a lot of people for shock,” she continued as they drove past the Post Office, where Peter’s office was, and entered the outskirts of Farringdon. “Our house was turned over and one wall smashed in. I guess the furniture just floated away.” “It would have to float somewhere, wouldn’t it?” Holly questioned. “I suppose it would, but we never found it. Grandma wanted us to take some of her things,” Judy remembered, “but we thought it would be better to leave her house the way it was and buy everything new. Of course we couldn’t replace the beautiful fruitwood bench Dad had in his reception room or the lady table. That was a lovely period piece that had been in the Bolton family for generations.” “What period?” asked Holly, who was something of an expert on antique furniture. She once had lived with a cousin who collected antique glassware. “Empire, I believe.” “Empire furniture is valuable. Usually it’s pretty solid, too. Why did you call it the lady table?” Holly wanted to know. 17 “That’s the name I gave it when I was a little girl. There were ladies carved on the legs. They held the marble table top on their heads. They had such quiet, patient faces.” Now Judy was thinking back in spite of herself. It had been exciting, furnishing the so-called Haunted House in Farringdon and exposing its “ghosts.” New furniture had been bought, and a few good antiques had been discovered in out-of-the-way shops. Dr. Bolton’s massive oak desk was one such piece. Judy’s dresser with the secret drawer was another. Buying it all by herself had been a real adventure. Only gradually had she come to realize their loss. Judy’s thoughts broke off as she suddenly stopped the car. They had been driving through a small town to the north of Farringdon. A dingy row of gray houses lined the road. Some of their porches had been sheared off in order to widen the highway, and some had been made into shops. Judy had noticed one of the signs: H. SAMMIS Antiques, Used Furniture Bought and Sold “And there’s a green car in the driveway!” exclaimed Holly. “Oh, Judy! Luck is with us after all. That boy may be inside right now trying to sell my typewriter!” “Maybe it’s still in the car. Let’s have a look,” Judy suggested. 18 She parked the Beetle right behind the green car, blocking the driveway. No one seemed to be around so Judy and Holly carefully examined the interior. “Empty! He’s probably trying to sell it. Come on inside,” Holly urged, pulling Judy along with her. “Don’t be in such a hurry. He can’t get out while we’re parked there, and I want to take down his license number! There!” Judy announced when she had it. “Now we’ll go in like any other customers and pretend we want to buy something.” “A typewriter!” agreed Holly. “We’ll just ask. Then, if we see mine, we’ll call the police.” Judy shook her head. She didn’t think it would be that easy, but she was willing to go along with Holly just for the adventure. “If we don’t find your typewriter,” she told her, “we may find some old cards for my collection. Anyway, it will do no harm to go in and look around.” “Look at all the lovely old glassware in the windows,” Holly pointed out as they walked around to the front of the shop. “There’s a blue glass hen just like the one Cousin Cleo has in her collection. And look at those chalkware lambs and that beautiful luster cream pitcher!” Inside the shop it was hard to move around because of all the old furniture crowded into every inch of floor space. Judy had to move a chair to reach the cream pitcher Holly had admired. Before she could touch it, a voice barked at her. “Careful there! You’ll have to pay for anything you break.” 19 “I have no intention of breaking anything,” replied Judy. “I just wanted to see that luster cream pitcher.” “That’s eighty dollars!” “Oh dear! I guess I don’t want it then. We really came in to look at typewriters. You do sell typewriters, don’t you?” Judy asked, looking around the shop to see if the driver of the green car had come in. “New ones,” Holly added. Her typewriter was almost new. “You came to the wrong place for a new typewriter. We sell anything and everything so long as it’s old.” The shopkeeper, a stout, balding man, looked at the two girls as if he considered them slightly stupid. “I meant—almost new,” Holly stammered. “Are you Mr. Sammis? Will you let us see what you have, please?” Judy asked. He showed them a row of ancient typewriters in the back of the shop. They were all of the same make, and all were equally old and dusty. “There aren’t any others?” Holly’s voice held disappointment. “No, that’s all we have.” His tone of voice plainly told the girls he wished they’d go, but Judy wasn’t ready to leave until she had done a little more exploring. “I’m collecting old cards and calendars for a library exhibit,” she explained. “Do you have anything I can use?” “In the box over there. But don’t be all day looking them over. Your car’s parked right in front of mine.” Mr. Sammis had just seen it through the window. 20 “Oh, is that your car?” Judy asked innocently. “We saw a boy driving it this morning.” “Impossible!” he snorted. “It’s been parked right where it is all day.” Judy and Holly looked at each other. They could have made a mistake. Green cars were common, just as Horace had said. The typewriter wasn’t in the shop, and neither was the boy who had been seen driving a green car. Voices came from the upper floor, but they were indistinct. Then, suddenly, something was dropped with a loud thud. Holly jumped. “My wife,” Mr. Sammis explained. “She’s always dropping things. Did you find anything you want?” “Not yet,” Judy replied. She and Holly had been looking through the box of old cards. Near the bottom Judy found a little booklet marked School Souvenir . “Here’s something for the September exhibit,” she said as she opened it. “But that’s for the close of school,” Holly objected, reading over her shoulder. The illuminated verse read: Oh! Swift the time has fled away As fleeting as the rose Since school began its opening day Till now its day of close. The verse was followed by the name of the teacher and pupils in some long-ago country school. Hugh Sammis was one of the names. “Is this for sale?” Judy asked, sure he wouldn’t want to part with it. 21 He laughed, an unpleasant sort of laugh as if he were making fun of her. “It’s junk. I was going to throw it out. You can have it for a quarter.” “I’ll take it then,” Judy decided. “It’s for the beginning of school, too,” she pointed out as she and Holly made their way back to the front of the shop. “Careful there!” Mr. Sammis warned again. It was his own elbow that knocked over the little table with the claw feet, but he looked at Judy as if she had done it. One foot with a claw clutching a glass ball fell to the floor. He picked it up and waved it in Judy’s face. “Now see what you’ve done,” he charged unreasonably. “I told you you’d have to pay for anything you broke. Young people nowadays are all alike. Careless, blundering fools, the lot of them. Come in here for junk and break up my best furniture! This table is fragile—” “I can see it is,” Judy interrupted. “The claw fell off because the table leg was already broken. I can see where it’s been glued. The top is warped, too. It looks as if it had been left out in the rain.” “What if it was? Where else could I leave it when the roadmakers took half my house? I won’t charge you much for it. Only fifteen dollars.” “Fifteen dollars! What are you talking about, Mr. Sammis? I’ll never pay for a table I didn’t break,” Judy declared with indignation. 22 “You won’t, eh? We’ll see about that. You’re Dr. Bolton’s daughter, aren’t you? I’ll just send him a bill for twenty dollars,” the shopkeeper announced with a satisfied chuckle. “Then, if he won’t pay his bill, I won’t pay mine.” “But that isn’t fair!” Judy cried, her gray eyes blazing. “No? Then I’ll make it twenty-five.” “Let’s go before he puts the price any higher,” Holly urged, pulling at Judy’s arm.

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62244

GALACTIC GHOST By WALTER KUBILIUS The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust. "We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover. "Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use. The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob. "To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!" "Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars. Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again. Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars. Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could. Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard. "I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling. "Saw what?" "It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!" "In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?" Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space. "The Ghost Ship!" Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium. "There's nothing there," he said firmly. "It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone. For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou . The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed. When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain. Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth! Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life. Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou . Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship. But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable. Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships? The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars. "There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away. Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space? He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again. But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter. Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him. Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item: " Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father." Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him. Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done. And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth. In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists. Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone. Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason. Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew: Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you! And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind. Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him. Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it. How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care. Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years. He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth. He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze. There was a ship, coming toward him! For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth. For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him. The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him. "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU." With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message. "SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!" He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard: "NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?" Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words. "YES! COMING!" The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair. He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock. The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever. Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion. "It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now." He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him. He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity. He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth. During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused. Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away. And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind. He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him. "I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to." Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body. He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail. Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else. The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage. "How do you feel, Space Man Willard?" "Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled, "Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ." The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man. "You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!" "Yes?" the old captain said. "Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!" A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes. "I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die." Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips. "When will we go to Earth?" he asked. The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him. "You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly. Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew . "Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist. "Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..." "... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!" The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never.... "Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!" "Yes."

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61412

THE COURSE OF LOGIC BY LESTER DEL REY They made one little mistake—very natural—and disastrous! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The male silth plodded forward wearily at sixty miles an hour, pausing only long enough to uproot and wolf down one of the rare scrub trees directly in its path. Its three hundred tons of massive body shook the ground as the great hind legs thumped along, and every cell of it ached with hunger. It was warm blooded, despite its vaguely reptilian appearance. Only meat could satisfy its need for energy. But the great herds lay a thousand miles to the north of this barren land. Inside the silth, the two-pound network of converted nerve cells that was Arnek brooded darkly in self-pity and resentment against the inflexible female logic of his mate. Ptarra had won her point, as she always did; now she might at least have shown some consideration for him and his silth! "Arnek!" The call came sharply on one of the guard frequencies of the mental spectrum. "Arnek, stop lagging and get up here!" He could feel his nerve body tense from horn tip to tail root, but he stifled his response and quickened his pace. Ahead, the trail left by Ptarra's legs led through a gully and up a rise to the lip of a small, stony basin. The four hundred tons of Ptarra's female silth squatted below the edge and the great head was half hidden as it peered downward around a boulder. "Quiet!" Ptarra ordered sharply. Then, as Arnek switched from a thudding run to a smooth, creeping approach, the mental impulse took on a note of triumph. "Look down there and then tell me I don't know a ship trail from a meteor!" The bowl was bright in the glare of the orange sunlight, but at first Arnek saw nothing. Then, as his gaze swept back toward the nearer section, he blinked his great eyes, only half believing what they registered. It was a small thing, hardly taller than Arnek's silth—maybe not even as tall. But it was too regular and obviously artificial, a pointed cylinder, to be a meteorite. Between two of the base fins there seemed to be an opening, with a miniature ramp leading down to the ground. It looked like a delicately precise model of a spaceship from the dawn of time. It was obviously too small to be more than a message carrier. Yet, as he looked more closely, he could see motion. Two tiny creatures, not more than six feet in height, were scurrying around near the base. Bright patches of fur or decoration covered them, and they seemed to move on two of their four limbs. Arnek shivered down the length of his nerves with an ancient distaste for crawling things. "Let's go back," he suggested uneasily. "There's nothing here for us, and I'm hungry." "Don't be silly," Ptarra answered, and the old female superiority was strong in the thought. "Of course it's too small for us; I knew that when I saw the landing trail yesterday evening. It must be an instrument probe, with test animals. If it has telemetering equipment, though—" Arnek tested the three spectra uneasily. At this distance, even a tight beam should be detectable. But he could feel nothing. There was only the steady wash of inertia-gravitic wavules, the electromagnetic noise from the sun and the growing, contemptuous mental leakage from Ptarra. Then he squirmed in embarrassment as his eyes detected the cracked base of the little ship. Obviously, it had landed hard—probably hard enough to ruin instruments and release the two creatures. He should have noticed that at once. There was no time to admit his error, however. Ptarra's silth lunged upright and the great rear legs began pulping ground and rocks in a full charge. Arnek leaped to follow out of old hunting habit. On a down-grade, his lighter silth soon caught up with the other. Below, the two humans swung around at the earth-shaking thunder of the charge and started a frantic scrambling. They were making shrill sounds now, and the extreme low band of the mental spectrum held faint impulses. Ptarra's thoughts lashed against his nerves. "Cut them off! Don't let them back to the probe. They may have destruct conditioning." In the hunt, Arnek had long since become only an extension of his dominant mate. Now he folded his forelegs and dropped his head and neck into a javelin aimed between humans and ships. The smaller of the two was almost at the ramp. At the last moment, moved by a sudden impulse, Arnek dropped his head lower and retracted his neck to soften the blow. He felt the human midge strike against his snout and go caromming off, to land fifty feet away. Dim pain impulses stirred in the low mental background. Anger—or something like it—came from the other creature. Arnek braked and pivoted sharply. The larger human had run forward toward the bloodied smaller figure. But as the silth's head faced the creature, one of the human's arms darted to something strapped about its middle. There was a surprising blast of sound. A stream of tiny, exploding pellets struck against Arnek's snout. He bellowed in annoyance and took a step forward, lifting a foreleg to swat at the midge. It jerked back. Then it darted forward, bending to lift its companion in its forelimbs. Either the gravity here was less than on its home world, or the thing was stronger than it looked. The first leap sent the burdened human backwards more than twenty feet. Then it was bounding off in frantic efforts to reach the further side of the depression where a jumble of rocks might give it cover. There was amusement in Ptarra's thoughts. "If your hunger is so great, why didn't you eat them? They aren't much, of course, but the blood smells sweet enough." Arnek sighed along his nerves, unable to answer. Let Ptarra put it down to another male whim if she liked, but he hadn't thought of eating them before. There had been something cute and pathetic about them. They reminded him of the little gulla he had owned in his youth, in a long-lost, ruined universe. "It had a weapon," he commented, changing the subject. Ptarra rumbled an assent. "I noticed. Interesting conditioning. The probe builders must have superb nerve development to do that to the lower orders. They'll make good silths.... Now let's see what we can find in the probe." She slipped a claw into the base opening and began working it upwards as delicately as the clumsy foreleg would permit. Arnek moved forward to help, but she waved him back impatiently, and he waited meekly until she finished. She was right, of course. As a male, he had no training with mechanisms. He would only have ruined whatever lay inside. It was a marvelously delicate set of machinery ... though the theory behind the engineering seemed rather elementary. Arnek studied what he could of it, growing more puzzled. "Maybe the creatures operated it," he suggested. "What makes you think so?" "I don't know. It just seems somehow—" "Intuition!" Ptarra snorted. Then she seemed less certain. "Yet I can't blame you this time. It does almost look that way. But it's logically impossible. Besides, there are automatic controls for guiding the probe. The builders probably just amused themselves, the way we once put slurry-pods in the gulla pens. Ah, this looks sound enough!" She pulled a tiny box out of the wreckage that had been spread out flat on the ground. With infinite care, she managed to hook one claw over a miniature control. Almost immediately, radio waves began forming a recurrent pattern along their nerves, coming in long and short pulses. Half an hour later, there was another faint quiver of radio waves from space, this time completely modulated. Even Arnek could realize that it was on the same frequency, but dopplered to indicate something approaching their world. He stopped browsing for the few stunted trees and came back to join his mate. Night was just falling. Ptarra led them back toward the rock ledge from which they had first spied the probe. There was a large fissure in the rocks into which they could just squeeze, and which would hide them from the sight of any landing craft. A moon came up, and they could see the depression clearly in its light. Now Arnek saw the larger human slipping across the ground toward the wreck of the probe. It darted about frantically, but with an appearance of purpose. A few moments later, it was retreating, carrying a load of packages with it. "It seems almost intelligent," he said softly. He strained to follow the faint wash of impressions on the lower band. There was something there that struck a familiar chord in his thoughts, but he could not decode it. "Just instinct," Ptarra dismissed it with cool logic. "A female seeking food for its injured mate." Arnek sighed uncomfortably. "It doesn't seem female," he objected. "Another hunch? Don't be silly, Arnek. It has to be a female. The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female. How else could it care for the young? It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for himself. The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all." There was no answer to such logic, other than the vague discontent Arnek felt. And he knew that was only because of his envy of the greater ability of the other sex. He settled back, ruminating hungrily and listening to the signal from space. The little box from the wreck was silent now, but the other signals were stronger. Ptarra nodded. "They're coming. After four hundred years, we have a chance. New silths to breed. A chance to reproduce ourselves and multiply. A new universe for our own." There was immense satisfaction with self in her thoughts. "Well, I earned it!" Arnek could not deny it. It had been more than four hundred years in this galaxy. Eight thousand of them had set out, leaving behind a small, ancient universe being wrecked by the horror of an exploding supernova. They had been driven out from the planetary conquests of a billion years and had sought refuge across intergalactic space to this universe. A hundred of the marvelously adapted silths of their universe had survived the eons of suspended animation to preserve their occupants. And then had come the hunt for new silth forms, since the trip had aged the others beyond the power of reproduction, in spite of all their precautions. Finding a silth form was never easy. There had been only three animals that had served in their entire old galaxy. Only a creature with several pounds of nerve tissues could hold the nuclear proteins of the sentient annas. And that required huge creatures, since nerve tissue was always so thinly scattered in normal flesh. They had toured a quadrant of the new galaxy, studying planet after planet, before they found this world. Here the great beasts were barely sufficiently endowed with nerve fiber. Eight annas had survived this far. Six failed to stand the shock of entry and regrowth in the new silth forms. Now there was only the one pair—Arnek and Ptarra. Left to himself, Arnek would have perished long ago. Their hope of retraining the clumsy forelegs of the silth forms had proved futile, and the nerve capacity was too low for them to exercise their full faculties. The converted nuclei of the cells was never quite efficient, either. And there seemed no hope of ever reproducing their own. Certainly no newly budded anna could survive the metamorphosis into these awkward bodies; that had been almost impossible for mature powers. Nor could a young anna survive long without a silth. Four hundred years! And now—now, he thought, he was tired. It no longer mattered. His home lay in ruins eons away. Let Ptarra worry about it. He twisted his neck back to put his snout under his tail and tried to sleep, while hunger rumbled noisily in his stomach. The sun was glaring down again when he awoke to the nudging of Ptarra's snout, and there was a roaring in the air above. Something rushed downwards, bellowing out thrust against gravity. It was another ship, landing over the wreckage of the first. But it was no monster such as might have carried new and better silth forms. It was hardly larger than the first, though it somehow seemed to be better made. It landed smoothly and squatted on the ground, sending out signals. "Another probe," Ptarra said. There was disappointment in her thoughts, quickly masked by cold logic. "Naturally, they'd wait to check with something like this. There will probably be several probes before they decide they have to investigate personally. All right! We'll give them something to worry about." She was lunging to her feet, just as an opening appeared in the ship. This time something ran out, down the ramp—a tiny gadget of churning tracks and metal carapace, chuffing out shrill little motor sounds. It circled briefly and then headed across the bowl. "Stop it," Ptarra ordered. "It may have a camera, so don't waste time. The less the builders learn about us, the better." Arnek took off. His hunger had so far failed to weaken him, and he was covering the ground at two hundred miles an hour before the little vehicle had picked up a tenth of that speed. At the last moment, it seemed to be aware of him. There was a wash of mental shock and confusion. Then his snout hit the car in a sideswipe that tossed it fifty feet to land on its back. He lumbered forward to squash it, then hesitated. An opening had appeared and two of the tiny humans were staggering out. One was supporting the other. At sight of him, both stopped in shock. For a second, they stood rooted to the ground. Then the larger one began a clumsy effort at running, half carrying the other. Blood left a trail behind them. Arnek could have squashed them with a single thrust of his leg. But he stood irresolutely, observing the garments and headgear they wore, remembering his youth and a gulla draped with a ribbon and bells. They were heading for the rocks nearest them, a long way from where the first two had found refuge. For a second, he felt impelled to turn them and drive them toward the others. Then a wave of amusement from Ptarra checked him. "They'd never reach that far," she called. "They can't survive the crash of their vehicle. Let them go." Arnek felt the faint, murky mental signals so low on the band, and he knew Ptarra was right. They were staggering now, and the smaller one seemed to be only partly conscious. He sighed and scooped up the ground car, carrying it back to Ptarra. This time his mate was making no effort to rip the ship apart. She was staring through one of the tiny ports, trying to fit her great eye against it. And she seemed uncertain. Finally she took the ground car and began dismantling it, looking for automatic or remote controls. There were none. "Maybe the creatures operated it—and the ship," Arnek said. He expected the same reaction the remark had drawn before. This time Ptarra showed no amusement. Her great head shook in puzzlement. "About one time in ten thousand a crazy male hunch comes true," she muttered. "Intuition! It's against all logic. But there are only manual controls here. Where are those silly creatures?" The two that had arrived last were pitifully exposed, just within an opening in the rocks. It was a shallow space, hopeless to defend. The smaller one lay supine, but the larger human faced the two silths, holding his pitiful weapon, and waited grimly until they were almost within reach. This time the explosive pellets were aimed for their eyes. Ptarra dropped her eyelids, swearing as the missiles stung. She reached in with a short foreleg. There was a single shrill cry and the sound of the weapon striking against a rock; the low band was suddenly quiet. Arnek heard a soft gulp. When he looked, the larger human was gone. A sudden shock ran through Ptarra's thoughts. Her great eyes blinked and a huge tongue ran over her lips. "Nerve fiber!" Her shout covered the entire spectrum. "Arnek, there are pounds of nerve fiber in the creature! High grade—better than that in these silth forms. As good as that in any silth. Here, give me the other." She didn't wait for Arnek's help, however. She dragged the corpse out and began working as delicately as the silth body would permit. Her mental signals were a blur. Then she stopped, staring down at what she held. "There—a cavity in the head, filled with nerve fibers. There must be three pounds there alone. What freak of evolution would put them all together in such a vulnerable spot? And yet, there's a certain efficiency about it. It isn't logical—and yet it is." Abruptly, the evidence was gone. "Come on," she ordered. Arnek sighed, and his stomach rumbled a protest. But he ignored it. "What good is it? We surely can't make a silth out of a tiny thing like that?" "Why not?" Contempt for male thought was mixed with smug satisfaction for her own. "We don't use the other cells anyhow. Oh, there will be difficulties. They may be short-lived. But with such high grade fiber, we can risk infiltrating a new one as often as we need. There should be enough of them. They probably have half a dozen to a litter twice a year, like most small forms. Possibly billions of them can live on a single planet. And since they're colonizing other worlds like this one...." Even Arnek could see the logic behind Ptarra's assumption in that. Colonizing would explain the sending out of a male and female in each ship, with ships spread out days apart. It wasn't the most efficient method, but it usually insured against any major accident. His people had used the same method at times. It all seemed quite logical, but Arnek felt a tension of intuition along his entire nerve network. No anna had ever used a silth capable of independent intelligence. There must be something wrong with it. Once they infiltrated the new silth, of course, they could soon convert enough nerves to blank out all control from their carriers. But.... "Their weapons," he cried. "Ptarra, in those bodies, we'd be vulnerable to their weapons. And during the ten days we have to hibernate to grow into their nerves, they'd kill us." Ptarra grunted. "Sometimes," she admitted, "you almost think like a female. They would kill us, of course, if we stupidly stayed where later arrivals could find us. Now come on. We've got to chase the creatures around today until they're tired enough to sleep soundly. And don't let them get near that ship, either!" It was a bitter day for Arnek. His stomach protested, and by the end of the chase, his legs were beginning to weaken. But ahead of them, the two humans were staggering in the light of the setting sun. The smaller was leaning on the larger as they finally found and entered the little cave near the ship that Ptarra had chosen for them long before. Night had fallen before Ptarra was satisfied. The two silths moved forward as softly as they could, but the loud breathing noises went on, and there was no stir of alarm anywhere on the mental band. "Do you remember everything?" Ptarra asked. "You've got to regain consciousness after the first stage. You can do that, if you set your mind to it." "I remember," Arnek agreed wearily. He'd had the whole routine drilled into him repeatedly until he was sick of it. It was like the horror of having her force him to adapt to this present silth. While he had been ready to accept assimilation, she had fought with him and with her own transformation, refusing to admit even his intuition that their race was ended. Only her cold logic had saved them. He could not deny it now. "Be sure you take the smaller male body," she warned again. "Unless that's the female. You found evolution different in these creatures once," he reminded her. For a moment, she was silent. Then there was a mental shrug, and almost amusement as she answered. "Matching sex isn't logically necessary. It might even be an interesting amusement. But I must have the larger body." She began shifting at once. The silth gasped and tried to thresh about in death as Ptarra released control. Arnek sighed to himself and began to follow. It was worse than he remembered. After the centuries, the cells hated to give up their fixed form. The agony of the silth fed back to him, until his withdrawal stopped its heart. But slowly the nuclear matter flowed from the cells and up the pathways to their egress, taking the minimum of nutrient fluid with them. It took nearly an hour, and he could see the thin film of Ptarra already lying over the sleeping human. He began hurrying now, remembering her warning that the humans would not stay here once they wakened to find the two abandoned silths dead. He forced himself over the hateful dryness of the floor, up to the open mouth. Beyond lay the lungs, the circulatory system, and then the strange nerve bundle in the skull. Some of it was ugly, and some was hard. But the last stage was almost pleasant. He had forgotten how unsatisfactory the nerves of the last silth had been. These were like coming home to a friendly world, in a universe that had died too long ago and far away. For a time, he was almost glad that he had not died with it. Then the first allergic reactions began, and he had to relapse into instinct, to let his being fight to save both himself and his host cells from the reaction. He set the first stage up, however. This time he managed with no help from Ptarra. Then he relapsed into unconsciousness, making no effort to control his new silth yet. He'd have to revise when the silth awoke, he told himself. But it was only a dream order, half completed.... It was a sudden painful pressure of acceleration that finally brought him out of his torpor. He felt half sick, and he could vaguely sense that the new silth was fevered and uncomfortable. But, amazingly, it was sitting up. And around it was a room bigger than the whole ship had seemed, and controls under its hands, and fantastic equipment. "It's about time," Ptarra's thoughts reached him. They were weak now, since it was hard to transmit in a partial stage, but they were cold and sure. "I've been aware for hours, while the silths reached the ship and took off. We've been off planet for at least an hour. Long enough to study their body controls and to learn how the ship operates." Arnek sighed to himself, while the pressure of tension refused to leave. "Are you sure?" "Of course I'm sure! These are primitive machines, and I learned most of it from dismantling the first. They're primitive—but they're logical enough for understanding. I can even control the silth when she isn't aware." The larger human suddenly moved the controls, then jerked its hand back, staring at it. Words came to the ears of the silth in which Arnek rode. "I'm sick, Luke. I've got the twitches." The words brought stirrings strongly on the low band, almost but not quite understandably. They also brought a vocal reply from the other human. "Be glad you can twitch. Some bug we picked up, but it's better than being eaten. We're in the clover, kid. Maybe we still got more cop ships tailing us, but let 'em look. When they find the dinosaurs and what's left of our ship, they'll stop looking. The heat's going to be off! We can get back to Earth in a year or so and really live." Ptarra's thoughts cut through Arnek's efforts to understand. "Reproduction feelings," she reported in satisfaction. "They must have higher fertility than I hoped if they can think of it while sick." Then her thoughts sharpened. "Take over your silth!" The human at the board slumped abruptly. Arnek lashed out from the converted cells, felt a brief protest, and then was alone in the brain of the silth. He could not yet control it, but it had no independent will. "There is food and water near if we have to rouse from hibernation while we grow into these silths," Ptarra reported. "Now—help me if you can." Arnek let his weak thoughts blend into hers, trying to give strength as she had often done to him. She was straining her utmost will. Slowly and in jerks, the arm moved across the control board, and clumsy fingers managed to move controls. And at last, from Ptarra's mind, Arnek began to see the plan. There was fuel enough to bring them at maximum speed across an eddy of the galaxy toward the lone sun they had found long before. There a single planet swung in orbit—a planet with food but no dangerous animal life. And there they could wait and grow strong, and multiply as their silths multiplied. They could reach it almost as soon as they came out of hibernation finally, and it would be a safe haven in its isolation. There would be no fuel for further travel. But that could wait, while their numbers grew, and they could restore their lost technology and weapons with the clever hands of the human silths. Then they could take over the galaxy—as they had taken the one so long away! The hands fumbled under the limited control, but they moved across the board. And the automatic pilot was finally set and sealed. "Logic!" Arnek thought softly, and there was wonder at a mind like Ptarra's that could achieve such understanding of even alien mechanisms. Yet under it there was still a cold knot of fear along his nerves. Ptarra's thoughts had begun to fade from the strain and the long interruption to her hibernation. But now she caught momentary control again. There was appreciation in them for his praise. And then there was amusement. "Logic," she agreed. "But perhaps intuition isn't too bad for a male. You've been right twice." "Twice?" Arnek asked. He'd been somehow right that the silths controlled their own ships, of course. But.... "Twice," Ptarra said. "I've just realized my silth is a male, as you suggested it might be. Amusing, reversing the sexes, isn't it?" She tried to say something else, but the strain was too much, and full hibernation swept her mind away from that of Arnek. Arnek sat frozen for a time in his silth, knowing that it was also male. Then he turned it somehow to face the lost galaxy where his race had known its day and now entered its eternal night.

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20003

The Changelings When did the Washington Post swap identities with the New York Times ? One day, it seemed, the Post rollicked readers with its cheeky personality and the next suffocated them with the sort of overcast official news that made the Times famous. Meanwhile, the Times sloughed its Old Gray Lady persona for the daredevilry that was the Post franchise. The switch dawned on me one morning 10 years ago as I found myself flipping through the Post because I had to, not because I wanted to--and reading the Times for the joy of it, not because it was the newspaper of record. I know this sounds like the beginning of an encomium for the Times at the expense of the Post , but it's not. When the papers traded places, they exchanged virtues as well as vices . In the traded virtue category: The Times takes a lot of risks. It has turned its back on the five boroughs to become a national newspaper, even purchasing the Boston Globe , while the Post has burrowed deeper locally. Its columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich dish the sort of sauce Nicholas von Hoffman and the young Richard Cohen once served at the Post . It continues to innovate, with new sections like Monday's "Business Day" (a k a "The Information Industries") and Saturday's "Arts and Ideas," while the Post hasn't contributed anything significant to the template since the "Style" section in 1969. Its Sunday magazine is the best general interest publication in the world. The Post 's isn't. Other traded virtues: The Times prints in color, the Post doesn't (yet). The Times sports an aggressive and handsome design. The recent Post redesign aches like a bad face lift. Times Editorial Page Editor Howell Raines writes barrelhouse editorials demanding action--such as the resignation of Janet Reno--that stir substance and fanfaronade. The Post editorial and op-ed pages are so evenhanded that if Scotty Reston were resurrected, his soft gas would appear there, alongside that of Jim Hoagland. And the Times seasons its reporting with opinion, while the once liberal-and-proud-of-it Post prides itself on cool neutrality (some would count this as a swapped vice and not a swapped virtue). On the news side, Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. boasts he's so bias-free that he doesn't vote. On the vice side of the exchange, the Times ... takes a lot of risks. It's now the primary exponent of what Post ie Bob Woodward famously called the "holy shit" story--pieces so astonishing that you scream spontaneous profanities when you read them. The downside of holy shit stories is that they can turn out to be wholly bullshit, as Woodward learned in 1981, when a reporter under his editorial watch, Janet Cooke, got caught making up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. In its pursuit of holy shit, the Times routinely spins out of control. In 1991, it published the name of the woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape--for no particular reason--and then apologized for it. That same year, the paper digested Kitty Kelley's spuriously sourced Nancy Reagan biography on Page 1. In a transparent lunge for a Pulitzer Prize in early 1996, the Times published a seven-part series alleging that the downsizing of the American workforce was creating "millions of casualties." Actually, job creation was booming. Later that year, the paper spread its legs for the theory that TWA Flight 800 was downed by foul play, based on the discovery of "PETN" residues in the wreckage. The Times reported: "Law enforcement officers said it was impossible to know, for now, whether the explosion was caused by a bomb or a missile because PETN is an explosive component commonly found in both. Still, the discovery would seem to knock from contention the theory that mechanical failure caused the airplane to explode on July 17, killing all 230 aboard ." (Emphasis added.) Eventually, the Times and the investigators abandoned the PETN/bomb theory for the mechanical failure theory. Just this spring, two reckless Times stories slid off the road. Gina Kolata prematurely announced a cancer cure (while shopping a book proposal on the subject) and Rick Bragg botched a simple story about police corruption in small-town Alabama. Bragg, a writerish reporter who would be at home in Style, earned in the June 9 Times . The jailed sheriff spent 27 months behind bars, not 27 years, as Bragg originally reported. Bragg also got the age of the crusading newspaper editor wrong, misstated the paper's circulation, and mistakenly described the method by which the sheriff defrauded the government (the sheriff cashed checks improperly made out to him; he did not cash checks made out to the government). Horrible! Just horrible! But consider the alternative. Who wants to read a porcelain white newspaper that has flushed all its holy shit? Whose reporters drive Volvos to work? The Post isn't powered by Volvo--yet. But in adopting Old New York Times values of cautiousness and fairness and dullness, in striving to become the new Newspaper of Record, the Post has lost its verve. Sometimes a loss of verve is not a bad thing. Compare the Times and Post coverage of the China satellite story. In the Times , Jeff Gerth implies that illegal campaign donations from China + the extravagant campaign donations by Loral Space & Communications' chief executive to Democratic coffers = Clinton's OK of U.S. satellite launches. The Post 's sober coverage expands the theme to detail how the president was as happy to fulfill the satellite dreams of the Republican businessman from Hughes who lobbied heavily and donated sparingly as he was to satisfy the Democratic businessman from Loral who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars (see John Mintz's June 25 article, "How Hughes Got What It Wanted on China"). The Post 's version is probably closer to the facts, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've enjoyed the Times ' sensationalist coverage more. Of course the Post doesn't tiptoe all the time. Woodward's 1996 campaign finance pieces struck a chord that still rings, and I predict a similar impact for Barton Gellman's two-part series last week about how the United States and China nearly went to war in 1996 (click here and here). At its best, the Post can still swarm a breaking news story like Flytrap. But at its worst, it sits on hot news. In 1992, the paper delayed its exposé of masher Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., until after the election, thereby assuring his return to the Senate. In 1994, it spiked Michael Isikoff's Paula Jones reporting, so he left for Newsweek , where he has led the Flytrap story. Timesmen don't pay much attention to the Post , except to periodically raid the paper--as if it were a minor league team--for some of its better players. ( Post defectors include Celestine Bohlen, Gwen Ifill, Julia Preston, Michael Specter, Patrick Tyler, Patti Cohen, and David Richards--who defected back. Few careers, outside of E.J. Dionne's, have been made by going the other way.) But it should pay closer attention. It desperately needs something like the Style section, where it can run imprudent stories that readers are dying to read but have yet to acquire the Heft and Importance of a New York Times News Story. Then again, if the Times were to embrace the virtue of a Style section (or is that a vice?), would its news sections lose their current virtue of attitude? Post ies, on the other hand, obsess on the Times . Last month at the Post 's annual "Pugwash" editorial retreat, outgoing Managing Editor Robert Kaiser began his speech with the preposterous boast that the Post , with a staff half the size of the Times ', "does more for its readers, day in and day out." Kaiser obviously lusts for the Old Times as he repeatedly calls for "authoritative journalism" and higher journalistic "standards," and petitions Post ies to be more intellectual and creative. "Authoritative, creative journalism that meets the highest standards must have intellectual content," Kaiser says at speech's end as he road-wrecks his themes. Somebody get this editor an editor! The question of how the audacious paper turned stodgy floats over the Post newsroom like a thought balloon. The easy answer: Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee departed in 1991 after 26 years at the top. This theory singles out current Executive Editor Downie for abuse, but complacency took root as early as 1981, when the Post 's cross-town competitor, the Washington Star , folded, allowing the fat beast to diddle all it wanted without paying a price. When Donald Graham took over as publisher, he picked Downie as the editor who would help steer the paper away from the Georgetown elites and toward the masses, away from national competition and straight at the suburban dailies. You're reading the paper they wanted to make. Don Graham's biggest handicap is that he's the publisher who came after Katharine, and he's fearful that he'll blow her legacy. Downie's is that he came after Bradlee, and he's afraid he'll blow his. Who remembers the guys who canoed after Lewis and Clark? No wonder they operate the paper as if the frontier has closed behind them. In that context, Graham's conservatism makes business sense. His paper claims the highest reader penetration in the nation and is immensely profitable. Warren Buffett, a major stockholder in the company, whispers into his ear that he's a business genius. Why disturb the money-making machine? The last time the paper took an editorial risk was in 1986, when it barred no expense in relaunching the Washington Post Magazine as a prestige Sunday magazine on the scale of the New York Times Magazine . But the Magazine never got to compete with the Magazine : It was bushwhacked by a black talk-radio demagogue who unfairly labeled the debut issue racist and targeted the paper with demonstrations and a boycott. Its momentum shattered, the extravagantly funded Washington Post Magazine limped along for a couple of years until the Post abandoned its grand financial and editorial ambitions and downscaled it. Various sections of the Post have improved since then--it has invested heavily in zoned suburban coverage, expanded its business page, improved the quality of its travel section, extended the heft of its sports coverage, experimented with an advertorial insert about consumer electronics, and added a monthly midbrow science/history section ("Horizon")--but it's taken no publishing risks. The boldest Post stroke in recent years came this spring when Downie dethroned Kaiser as managing editor and appointed Steve Coll, a 39-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning whiz, who most recently served as Sunday magazine editor/publisher. Coll's vision for the Post , also laid out in a Pugwash speech, sounds like a description of the New New York Times : "[T]he future of the Post depends mightily on our ability to excel at enterprise journalism--on our ability to think more creatively, to tear the skin off of our subjects more often, to write better, to go deeper, to be more alive, to make more of a difference to readers." Good luck, Steve, you'll need it. Perhaps the Times derives its edge from its succession politics. Whereas Ben Bradlee served as Post editor-for-life, the Times places an informal term limit on its executive editor job, and this turnover has helped to reinvigorate the paper: Times executive editors know they must make their mark in haste, before their tenure is over. A.M. Rosenthal reinvented the paper during his tenure from 1977 to 1986, stealing from Clay Felker's playbook to explode the Times into a many sectioned national paper. His successor, Max Frankel, brought vivid writing to the paper from 1986 to 1994, making sure that one story made it to Page 1 every day just because it was fun to read. Joseph Lelyveld, who took over from Frankel, has stayed their courses. Meanwhile, the 56-year-old Downie is now seven years into the job. If he were a Times man, they'd be farming him out to write a column right about now. Instead, he's ensconced like the pope.

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20004

Welcome to SLATE An introduction and apologia. By Michael Kinsley The name? It means nothing, or practically nothing. We chose it as an empty vessel into which we can pour meaning. We hope SLATE will come to mean good original journalism in this new medium. Beyond that, who knows? Good magazines are exercises in serendipity. Credit--or blame--for the name "SLATE," by the way, goes to David Weld, then of Microsoft, now of Cognisoft Corp. A Seattle cyberwag says that the name "SLATE" is appropriate, because whenever he asks anyone from Microsoft, "How's your project coming along?" the answer he usually gets is, "'s late." SLATE , in fact, has been reasonably prompt. Less than six months ago, it was a four-page memorandum and a single Internet naif. SLATE is not the first "webzine," but everyone in this nascent business is still struggling with some pretty basic issues. Starting an online magazine is like starting a traditional paper magazine by asking: "OK, you chop down the trees. Then what?" To be honest, we are running late on a few things. For the reader--you--there is good news and bad news here. The good news is that our billing system isn't ready yet. We intend to charge $19.95 a year for SLATE. That is far less than the cost of equivalent print magazines, because there's no paper, printing, or postage. But $19.95 ($34.95 for two years) is more than zero, which is what Web readers are used to paying. We believe that expecting readers to share the cost, as they do in print, is the only way serious journalism on the Web can be self-supporting. Depending completely on advertisers would not be healthy even if it were possible. And we want to be self-supporting. Indeed one of SLATE's main goals is to demonstrate, if we can, that the economies of cyberspace make it easier for our kind of journalism to pay for itself. Most magazines like SLATE depend on someone's generosity or vanity or misplaced optimism to pay the bills. But self-supporting journalism is freer journalism. (As A.J. Liebling said, freedom of the press is for those who own one.) If the Web can make serious journalism more easily self-supporting, that is a great gift from technology to democracy. For the moment, though, SLATE is yours for free. So enjoy. We expect to start requiring registration in a few weeks, and to require payment beginning Nov. 1. The bad news for readers is that some features aren't quite ready yet. Prime among them is "The Fray," our reader-discussion forum. Meanwhile, though, please e-mail any comments you may have to slate@msn.com. We'll be publishing a traditional "Letters to the Editor" page until The Fray is up and running in a few weeks. We especially need, and appreciate, your comments in these early weeks. Every new magazine is a "beta" version for a while, especially a new magazine in a new medium. SLATE has gotten enormous hype--some of it, to be sure, self-induced, but much of it not. We appreciate the attention. But of course, it also makes us nervous. We have a smaller budget and staff than most well-known magazines--even smaller than some webzines. We don't claim to have all the answers. But, with your help, we plan to have all the answers by Christmas. [LINK TO TEXT BBB] So What's in It? First, let me urge you to read a special page called Consider Your Options. This page explains and executes the various ways you can receive and read SLATE. If you don't like reading on a computer screen, for example, there's a special version of SLATE that you can print out in its entirety, reformatted like a traditional print magazine. If you don't mind reading on a screen but hate waiting for pages to download--and hate running up those online charges from your Internet provider--you will soon be able to download the whole magazine at once and read it offline. Also on the Consider Your Options page, you can order SLATE to be delivered to your computer by e-mail. (Caution: This may not work with your e-mail system.) We'll even send you SLATE on Paper , a monthly compilation of highlights from SLATE, through the U.S. Mail. (The cost is $29 a year. Call 800-555-4995 to order.) Individual copies of SLATE on Paper will be available exclusively at Starbucks. And selected articles from SLATE will also appear in Time magazine. While you're on the Consider Your Options page, please read about how to navigate around SLATE. We use page numbers, like a traditional print magazine, and have tried to make it as easy as possible either to "flip through" the magazine or to and from the Table of Contents. OK, But What's in It??[STET double "??"] SLATE is basically a weekly: Most articles will appear for a week. But there will be something new to read almost every day. Some elements will change constantly. Other elements will appear and be removed throughout the week. Every article will indicate when it was "posted" and when it will be "composted." As a general rule the Back of the Book, containing cultural reviews and commentary, will be posted Mondays and Tuesdays, the longer Features will be posted Wednesdays and Thursdays, and the front-of-the-book Briefing section will be posted Fridays. If you miss something, you can easily call it up from our archive, "The Compost."( THIS NEEDS TO BE A HOT LINK) Let me try to describe a typical issue of SLATE. The Readme column will not always be as solipsistic as this one. It will usually be a commentary on public affairs by one of SLATE's editors. Several regular departments in the Briefing section are attempts at "meta-news": the news about the news, a sense of how the week's big stories are being played and perceived. The Week/The Spin takes a dozen or so topics, from this week's election-campaign developments to the latest big book from Knopf, and analyses, as objectively [LINK TO TEXT CCC]as possible, the spin they're getting, the sub-angles that are emerging, and so on. In Other Magazines uses the covers and contents of Time , Newsweek , etc., as a handy measure of what the culture considers important. (We aim to have these magazines in SLATE even before they reach the newsstands or your mailbox.) The Horse Race tracks the presidential candidates like stocks, as priced by the opinion polls, the pundits, and a genuine market in political candidates run out of the University of Iowa. Our man William Saletan will compute and analyze changes in the pundits index. The Gist, by contrast, is SLATE's effort to provide a quick education on some current issue in a form as free of spin as possible. Also free of quotes, anecdotes, and other paraphernalia. The only 1,000 words you'll have to read when you might rather read nothing at all. In a weekly department called Varnish Remover, political consultant Robert Shrum will deconstruct a 30-second TV spot from the election campaign. You can download a video or audio clip of the spot itself. "Assessment" will be a short, judgmental profile of some figure in the news. (Coming up soon: James Fallows on Wired magazine's godfather, Nicholas Negroponte.) Stanford economist Paul Krugman writes The Dismal Scientist, a once-a-month column on economic policy. (See his debut essay in this issue, about the economic war within the Clinton administration.) University of Rochester economist Steven Landsburg writes monthly on "Everyday Economics," using economic analysis to illuminate everyday life. (His first column, in our next issue, will explain how sexual promiscuity can actually reduce the spread of AIDS.) "The Earthling" will be a monthly column by Robert Wright, contributor to the New Republic and Time , and author of the acclaimed book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal . Other regular Briefing features will include a Press column by our deputy editor, Jack Shafer. Doodlennium is our weekly cartoon strip by Mark Alan Stamaty, whose "Washingtoon" appeared for many years in the Washington Post and Time . Our SLATE Diary will be an actual daily diary, written and posted every weekday by someone with an interesting mind. Our first diarist is David O. Russell, writer and director of Flirting With Disaster . Our second diarist will be novelist Muriel Spark. Can There Possibly be More? Our Features section begins each week with the Committee of Correspondence, our e-mail discussion group. The committee is run by Herbert Stein, a former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers best-known now for his witty columns in the Wall Street Journal . We have great hopes for e-mail as a medium of debate that can combine the immediacy of talk-television with the intellectual discipline of the written word. We hope for something halfway between The McLaughlin Group and the correspondence page of the New York Review of Books . Will it work? Check out our first attempt--Does Microsoft Play Fair?--and let us know what you think. The Features section is also where we run longer articles [LINK TO TEXT DDD] and occasional humor pieces (that is, pieces that are intentionally, or at least aspirationally, humorous). This week in The Temptation of Bob Dole, SLATE's Washington editor, Jodie Allen, cruelly analyzes the arguments for a tax cut. Social critic Nicholas Lemann writes on Jews in Second Place, about what happens to American Jews as Asians replace them at the top of the meritocracy. And the legendary recluse Henry David Thoreau emerges to give SLATE readers an exclusive peek at his new Web page. In SLATE Gallery, we have a continuous exhibition of computer-based art. You may like or dislike this stuff (we'll have plenty of linked commentary to help you decide). What appeals to us about computer art is that SLATE can show you not reproductions, but the actual art itself. We start with an offering by Jenny Holzer. This week's reviews include Ann Hulbert's book review of Miss Manners' latest encyclical; Sarah Kerr's television review of the changing fashions in season finales; Larissa MacFarquhar's High Concept column, about how managed care could improve psychotherapy; and Cullen Murphy's The Good Word, about the difference between "Jesuitical" and "Talmudic." In general, SLATE's Back of the Book will contain a weekly book review, alternating television and movie reviews, and a rotating menu of columns on music (classical and popular), sports, web sites, and other topics. Jeffrey Steingarten will be writing monthly on food ("In the Soup"), Anne Hollander on fashion ("Clothes Sense"), and Margaret Talbot on "Men and Women." Audio and video clips will be offered where appropriate. Every issue will have a poem, read aloud by the author, with text. In this issue is a new poem by Seamus Heaney. And coming up soon, two additional Back of the Book features: an interactive acrostic puzzle, and a stock-market contest. Does SLATE Have a Slant? SLATE is owned by Microsoft Corp., and that bothers some people. Can a giant software company put out a magazine that is free to think for itself? All we can say is that Microsoft has made all the right noises on this subject, and we look forward to putting the company's hands-off commitment to the test. But the concern strikes me as misplaced. In a day of media conglomerates with myriad daily conflicts of interest--Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Disney-ABC--how can it be a bad thing for a new company to begin competing in the media business? A journalist who worries about Microsoft putting out a magazine is a journalist with a steady job. Readers may also wonder whether SLATE will have a particular political flavor. The answer is that we do not set out with any ideological mission or agenda. On the other hand, we are not committed to any artificial balance of views. We will publish articles from various perspectives, but we will not agonize if the mix averages out to be somewhere other than dead center. [LINK TO TEXT EEE] A good magazine, though, does develop a personality, an attitude, [LINK TO TEXT FFF]and some prejudices--even crotchets. A few of SLATE's are already becoming clear. In discussing current events, we have a preference for policy over politics. We'd rather discuss the effect of Bob Dole's tax-cut proposal on the economy than its effect on Bill Clinton. Within the policy arena, we seem to have a special fondness for economics. This was not planned; it's one of those serendipitous developments I mentioned. Whether it reflects good luck or bad luck is a matter of taste (yours). Finally, we intend to take a fairly skeptical stance toward the romance and rapidly escalating vanity of cyberspace. We do not start out with the smug assumption that the Internet changes the nature of human thought, or that all the restraints that society imposes on individuals in "real life" must melt away in cyberia. There is a deadening conformity in the hipness of cyberspace culture in which we don't intend to participate. Part of our mission at SLATE will be trying to bring cyberspace down to earth. Should be fun. Thanks for joining us. Michael Kinsley is editor of SLATE. TEXT AAA: No, this is not a link to the Cognisoft home page. As a general rule, we plan to avoid hyperlinks to outside sites in the text of articles, and to group them at the end instead. It's a small illustration of our general philosophy--better call it a hope--that, even on the Web, some people will want to read articles in the traditional linear fashion--i.e., from beginning to end--rather than darting constantly from site to site. Go back. TEXT BBB: Only kidding. Easter. Go back. TEXT CCC: Objectivity, we hope, will distinguish this feature from Newsweek 's "Conventional Wisdom Watch," which is often an effort to set the spin rather than describe it. Anyway, the "CW Watch" was a rip-off of a similar feature in the New Republic when I was the editor there. And TNR 's feature itself was lifted from Washington, D.C.'s, City Paper , which was edited at the time of the theft by Jack Shafer, now deputy editor of SLATE. Go back. TEXT DDD: Those dread words "longer articles" raise one of the big uncertainties about this enterprise: How long an article will people be willing to read on a computer screen? We have several answers to this question: 1) We don't know. Clearly it's less than on paper, but how much less is uncertain. 2) We're determined to test the outer limits. 3) We'll do our best, graphically, to make reading on screen a more pleasant experience (suggestions welcome). 4) We'll also make SLATE as easy as possible to print out. 5) This will become less of a problem as screens are developed that can be taken to bed or the bathroom. 6) Two thousand words. Or at least we're starting--optimistically, perhaps--with the hope that 2000 words or so is not too much. (By contrast, a typical print-magazine feature or cover story might run anywhere from 5000 to 15,000 words.) At least among non-cyberheads, the computer-screen problem seems to be everyone's favorite conversational thrust with regard to SLATE. In recent months I've been amazed to learn of the places and postures in which people like to read magazines. Bed and bath are just the beginning. At a Seattle dinner party, a woman made the interesting point that her problem isn't the screen: It's the chair. Even "ergonomic" computer chairs are designed for typing, not for reading. For this woman, and for others who may feel the same way, we have asked several furniture designers to sketch a real computer reading chair--one you can curl up in with your mouse and your cup of Starbucks and read SLATE online. That feature will appear in a week or two. Go back. TEXT EEE: In this regard we are more like the newsmagazines-- Time , Newsweek , U.S. News & World Report --than the overtly political magazines such as the New Republic , National Review , or the Weekly Standard . Each of the newsmagazines may have an identifiable political tilt. But pushing a particular line is not what they are fundamentally about, and knowing where they average out won't tell you what any individual article will say. Go back. TEXT FFF: This is different from "attitude"--that free-floating, supercilious cynicism that is much prized in the culture of cyberspace. We may develop an attitude--a set of prejudices derived from logic and evidence, as best we can determine them--but we'll leave "attitude" to the kids. Go back.

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The Snare By RICHARD R. SMITH Illustrated by WEISS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none! I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt. Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity. Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth. We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface. The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before." Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles. "What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly. Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!" "If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface." "Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it." "Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit. Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!" I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth. "All right," I conceded. Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal. A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago." Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?" Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old." We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!" A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess. "There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening. We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible. "Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...." Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage. "You want to go in?" my wife asked. "Do you?" "Let's." I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller. Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway. For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky. The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!" "Are you all right?" "Yes." He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage.... ... and struck an invisible solid wall. My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight. " What happened? " "The door to this damned place closed," I explained. " What? " Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps. The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault. The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically. Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us. "Miller!" "Yes?" "See if you can get this thing open from the outside." I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls. Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak. "Miller, get help!" "I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently. "What happened to him?" "I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves. I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City.... Static grated against my ear drums. Static! I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City." "Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!" Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth." "It does," Marie agreed. "But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!" We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion. I deactivated my radio. Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond. Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies. We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door. We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last. We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks. Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding. I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet. "Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later." They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets. At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel. "The end of the line," he grunted. As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly. He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand. The door closed behind him. Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!" Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice. Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway. Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock. The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form. Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall. I put my arms around her, held her close. "Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly. For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon. We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship. My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality. I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps. We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly. Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered. This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms. I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly. The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column. "Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!" The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle. "Let's see how it tastes," I said. I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers. The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance. I tasted a small piece. "Chocolate! Just like chocolate!" Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid. "Milk!" she exclaimed. "Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her. The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen. Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing. Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap. The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position. "Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars. We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited. A few minutes later, Marie entered the room. I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it. She sat next to Verana. "What happened?" my wife asked. Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—" "Telepathic?" Verana interrupted. "Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!" "What memories?" I inquired. She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...." Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger. " Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!" "Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically. "Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!" "Start at the beginning," I suggested. He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! " "And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed. "Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us." "How long will the trip take?" I asked. "Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!" Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her. "Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—" "Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped. Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods." "Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly. "We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!" "It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room. Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!" Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls. "Where are you? Who are you?" "I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine." "Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?" "No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical. "What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously. "You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity." I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?" "The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship." "Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth." "It's useless," the ship warned us. For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal. Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on. The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor. After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space. We gave up. The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen." At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament. "Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!" "You sure?" I asked. "What?" " Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance." My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry. For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth. Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked. "Whiskey!" "My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained. I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine. We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles. "Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded. " Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?" "My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition." Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly. "Shtop me, then!" "I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language." It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment. After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana. I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons. Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one! I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be. They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon. The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever . I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning." When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully. I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before. I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair. Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness. "Awake, huh?" "What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him. "Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly. "It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me." "What's your plan?" I asked. He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution." I grunted my disgust. "The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation." "So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone. "The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?" "Right." "Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?" "What remark?" "It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?" I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so. "Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?" "Hell, I don't know," I confessed. "Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times." "Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him. " Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!" "So what?" He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—" "What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—" "I'll show you, Ed." He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath. "Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air. "Yes," the electronic brain replied. "Watch!" Kane tightened his fingers around my throat. Verana and Marie screamed shrilly. My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully. "Please stop," the machine pleaded. "What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!" The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions! "Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!" "No," the machine admitted. "If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !" The alien electronic brain was silent. By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled. "If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure." My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem. "Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later." A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness. "You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon." Kane released his grip on my throat. "See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?" I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.

test

61171

THE EXPENDABLES BY JIM HARMON It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide. I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing. "Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer." "They can't help me. I need an operator in your line." "I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal." Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?" "I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print." "I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy." You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat. "All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?" He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943." "Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me." "I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury." "I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could." "I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?" "Quicklime?" I suggested automatically. "What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...." "I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that." "I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government." "That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?" "Ways, Professor, ways." The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off. "Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you." "Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially. The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it. The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen. Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done. Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod. But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed. I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter. This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem. Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen. Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting. I cut corners. I bypassed complete safety circuits. I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy. I turned the machine on. The lights popped out. There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox. I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held. The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take. But there it was. The internal Scale showed zero. I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus. I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects. I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work. But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing "how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation. "Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum. "Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you." "I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub." "Why not? How could they trace them back to you?" "You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know." "Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator." "Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before." Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?" "Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?" Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics. "I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future." The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation. "I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months." "Or six million years." "You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor." I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do." Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?" "I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run." The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...." "Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...." "Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators." "There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine." "Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—" "What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically." Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial. "Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—" "You are ?" I said. He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock. "You are ." "I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything." "I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine." "Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?" "There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said. "You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one." "Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach." "Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably.... Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it. There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them. I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work. Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it. Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of. The closed sedan was warm, even in early December. Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered? Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street. "The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me. "What?" The firing squad? "The Expendable, of course." "Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it." He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined. A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight. "Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder. I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears. The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated. Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem." "Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...." "You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy." That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped. Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred. One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished. "What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine. Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved. "Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice. "He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area." "You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics." "No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works." "You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?" "Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ." My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld. I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it. "What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?" "This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat." "Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ." "Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ." "The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training. "You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine." "Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?" There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning. One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.) The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray. This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks. If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles. I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang. I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door. He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor." "The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully. "He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ." I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants." "The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe." "Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?" "Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too." "Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?" "I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me. "Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock." This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health. "But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?" "The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it." There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell. "That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?" I knew what to tell them. I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office. Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls. "My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?" I agreed that it was. She got her pad and pencil ready. "Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming. "Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now. "Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams. "Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field." I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even. I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him. I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness. Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth. "G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown. "Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?" "Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission." The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it. "Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked. "Not at all, sir," she said dreamily. "May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first." Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency. Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation." "You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?" "Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back." I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?" The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?" "I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more." The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly. I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?" "At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame." "Clever of them." "Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—" He paused dramatically. "Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!" "I agree," I said reluctantly. Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that." I waved his protests aside. "I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously." "Why?" the young man demanded. "Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell." "Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?" "No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design." "But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom. "Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."

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The Beast-Jewel of Mars By V. E. THIESSEN The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal. One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you. He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city . He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human. His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin. He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back. He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real." He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again. The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them. He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks. When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city. When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried, "Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound. A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers." The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!" The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes. When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city." The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe. The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city." He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back. And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame. He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city." And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate. He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again. He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all. He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions. And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted. The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again. He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been. Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left. The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again. He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?" The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled: "Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal." Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest. Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal. The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city. He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city. The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist. Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city." Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?" "Yes. The Legend said you'd be back." Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?" "Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze." Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?" "We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back." After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!" They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight. Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them. Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street. For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one." Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun." There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it. There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious. He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?" There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out. Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy." The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!" Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain. The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck. A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd. "Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes." Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence. She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking, "If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull. She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom. Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode. After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies. The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric." Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here." Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty. The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please." Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table. There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?" Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?" Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt." Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?" Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things." Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette. Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars." "This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked. "Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality." Eric stared. The idea was staggering. "This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused. "You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it." Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely. Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?" "Yes. The time has come." "But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building. Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here." Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city. "We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come." Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?" For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return." Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?" "Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire." "My brother, Garve. What about him?" "He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"

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THE HANGING STRANGER BY PHILIP K. DICK ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw it hanging in the town square. Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself! It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost. From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square. Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands. It was a body. A human body. "Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!" Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there." "See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!" Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there." "A reason! What kind of a reason?" Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?" Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?" "There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops." "They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there." "I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure." Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!" "Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee." "You mean it's been there all afternoon?" "Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed." Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention. "I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green. The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue. "For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear. Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean? And—why didn't anybody notice? He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed." Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins." "What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick." "The body. There in the park." "Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy." Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?" "Ed's not feeling well." Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—" "What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously. "The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!" More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?" "The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!" "Ed—" "Better get a doctor!" "He must be sick." "Or drunk." Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him. "Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!" The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce. "Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured. "Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—" "Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath. "1368 Hurst Road." "That's here in Pikeville?" "That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—" "Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded. "Where?" Loyce echoed. "You weren't in your shop, were you?" "No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement." "In the basement ?" "Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—" "Was anybody else down there with you?" "No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope. "You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?" After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation." "Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?" "It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see." Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level." "It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on. "I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?" The two cops said nothing. "I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—" "This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes." "I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—" Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running. They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops. They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part. Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting. There was no sound behind him. He had got away. He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars. And to his right—the police station. He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them. Them? Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance. And—something else. Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky. He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees. Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof. Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him. He was seeing—them. For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water. They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building. He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on. Were there more of them? It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being. On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others. Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them. Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry. Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them. He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom. Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street. Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus. The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family. Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her. A high school boy in jeans and black jacket. A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness. Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner. Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof. Maybe there were others. Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited. A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away. Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed? The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond. The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce. The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them. A look rich with meaning. Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open. "Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—" Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him. Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off. Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book. Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—" He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him. Had he made a mistake? But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his. "Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—" Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room. "Pull down the shades. Quick." Janet moved toward the window. "But—" "Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?" "Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?" Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room. "Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me." "Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?" "The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—" "What are you talking about?" "We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind." "My mind?" "Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!" Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane." "Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat." "My coat?" "We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that." White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat. "Where are we going?" Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it." "The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it." "I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?" Janet was dazed. "The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—" "Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far. "Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile." "Now?" Tommy's voice came. "Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you." Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—" "You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?" "He's coming." Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?" "We're going for a ride." "A ride? Where?" Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—" He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing? A stinger. Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down. Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug. It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving. The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone. Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps. A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town. The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted. But ahead of him lay Oak Grove. He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville. A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string. The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me." "What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?" Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up." The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor." "Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel. "We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away." They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face. "You don't believe me," Loyce said. The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly. Loyce sagged. "Thank God." "So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million." Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured. "What is it?" "About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time." "A long time?" "Thousands of years. I don't think it's new." "Why do you say that?" "When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—" "So?" "They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly." The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle." "They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated." "Why defeated?" "They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance." The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out." "Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?" "That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. " Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?" "To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped." Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap." "And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste." Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—" There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered. "Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly. As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner. "Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him. "Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished. At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze. From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind. What the hell was it? Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated. And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.

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Tea Tray in the Sky By EVELYN E. SMITH Illustrated by ASHMAN [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute! The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair. "Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé." A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog. "I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs. Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy. "Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother." "Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?" Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered." The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother." Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki." "No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life." Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover." "An Earth tabu?" "Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that." Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars. Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute). Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days? The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?" Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence. A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba." "Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know. The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?" "Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not." "And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury." "How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed. "Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability. "My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly. "I'm afraid I don't have any cards." "Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...." Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?" Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?" "Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?" The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here." "But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested, "with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales." Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?" "Of course not, but—" "Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?" "Certainly not, but—" "Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?" "No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away." With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped. Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out. Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!" "Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects. "The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids, "but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega." The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble." "Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you." He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats." "Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms." "Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?" "Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?" A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets. "Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad." "Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen." Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...." Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?" "Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?" "Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers." "Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway. "We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning." All the passengers cheered. "Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering." Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap. The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green. "Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man. "The Universe is expanding every minute." The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets. Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality. The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man. Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?" "Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece. "Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?" "But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?" Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?" "Well, yes. But those are different." "Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'" "But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?" "Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field." After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant. "That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained. Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped. A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair." Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist. "Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself." A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered: "Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor." "If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica." "Movid stars go to Mars." Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business. "Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi." "Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza." "All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth." "Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered. Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk." "But they have no feet." "That has nothing whatsoever to do with it." Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?" "Of course not," Michael whispered weakly. "Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara." After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians. "You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?" "Very quaint," Michael commented. Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...." "I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before." "Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea." "I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?" "The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...." "Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging." "That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family." "They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean." "More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would." The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices. "This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand." "The pictures in my history books—" Michael began. "Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir." "Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part." "Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble." He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air. "I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it." "Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too." "Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised. "It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away." A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square. "Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays." The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's." "This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—" "Listen, could we—" Michael began. "—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—" "By the way—" "It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking." "But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might." The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know." "A taxi? Isn't there one closer?" "Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive." They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief. Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire. Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby. "Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...." Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius." The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too: "Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa." "And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station." Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing "Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky. "They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?" "Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?" The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact." Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials." "Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...." " Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?" Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would." Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination. "This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you." Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?" "Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is." "Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood." There was a short cold silence. "You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury. "You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter." "Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are." "Much better," Michael agreed. "By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?" Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society." "On Talitha—" Carpenter began. "I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic." A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind. "When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius." The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella." The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return. "I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it." "I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!" "Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization." The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?" Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.

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62212

PRISON PLANET By BOB TUCKER To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness. "Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?" Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it. "Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?" "No!" Roberds screamed. Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door. "Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly. "No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night. When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair. "Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?" "True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!" Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door. "Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!" The nurse came out of the door. "How is she?" Roberds asked. "Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...." "We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock." "I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?" "Eight days, in that ship." Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney. "Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked. "We call him Rat," Roberds said. She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?" Peterson opened his mouth. "Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell." "Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?" Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?" Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL. "As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here." "But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution." The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him." The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation. "Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson." "They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right." Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed." Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air. "Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!" Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?" "I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled. Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted. Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set." Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding. "Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away. Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again. "Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill. "Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?" Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky. He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words. "Well, can you?" she demanded. "Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?" "Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you." Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?" Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?" Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again. "When?" he whispered. "As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again. "Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards. She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment." "No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched. "Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly. "Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone. To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety. Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again. "I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—" "—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain. "Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it." He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch." She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock. "Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks. "Judith?" she asked. "Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe." "No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her. "Hey! Where are you going now?" "To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back. "Where has he gone?" Judith called. "Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you." The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock. "I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally. "This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law." "Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home." "How about these men that live and work here?" "They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without." "Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!" Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort. "Gray?" Judith asked fearfully. "Yes?" "Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?" Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned. "Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed. "I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney." "But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?" "Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles. "And Peterson?" she prompted. "Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him." " Fan him? I don't understand." "Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away. He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping. "You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up. "Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!" Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes. Rat unlocked the master level and shoved! "Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her. "Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign. "Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side. "That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel. "Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others. "That isn't doing either of them any good!" Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing. "Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out." "Don't know it," he said briefly. "Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded. Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?" Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it. "No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix." "Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?" Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars. "You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know." "So you?" "So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered. "Cold?" he inquired concernedly. "On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her. "Leave on! Hot out here." "But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!" "No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?" Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact. "What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean." He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?" "Patti." "Pretty, Patti." "No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?" "Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here." "And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?" Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring. "But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?" He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney, "yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think." They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face. "I have to have a drink." Rat stared at her without answer. "I said, I have to have a drink!" "Heard you." "Well...?" "Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer." She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap. They stood there glaring idiotically at each other. She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet. "Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!" Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something. "No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!" "But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel. "Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m." "H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?" "Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt. "H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded. Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare. No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up. Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse. "Flip-flop," he laconically explained. "For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis. "And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat. Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets. Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth. "Sorry!" Rat whispered. "Shut up and drive!" she cried. "Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain. Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers. Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls. Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving! "How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes. She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!" A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair. Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up. "Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?" "I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick." "I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?" "Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake." " Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!" "He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?" He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders. "Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison. "You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?" Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot. "Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?" Rat shook his head and said nothing. "But Roberds said eight days, and he—" "—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed. "Six days, no brake. No." "I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!" Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think." "You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land." "Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret. "Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?" "I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too. The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position. "Earth!" she shouted. "Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?" "Just name it!" "Not drink long time. Some water?" Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry. "There isn't any left, Rat." Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her. She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face. "Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?" He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen." "But why didn't you explain?" He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after." Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship." "They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now." The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way. "Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat." Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—" "Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.

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POTENTIAL ENEMY by Mack Reynolds [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] CAESAR HAD THE SAME PROBLEM AND NEVER SOLVED IT. LORD HELP US IF IT JUST CAN'T BE DONE! Alexander the Great had not dreamed of India, nor even Egypt, when he embarked upon his invasion of the Persian Empire. It was not a matter of being like the farmer: "I ain't selfish, all I want is the land that jines mine." It was simply that after regaining the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Darius, he could not stop. He could not afford to have powerful neighbors that might threaten his domains tomorrow. So he took Egypt, and the Eastern Satrapies, and then had to continue to India. There he learned of the power of Cathay, but an army mutiny forestalled him and he had to return to Babylon. He died there while making plans to attack Arabia, Carthage, Rome. You see, given the military outlook, he could not afford powerful neighbors on his borders; they might become enemies some day. Alexander had not been the first to be faced with this problem, nor was he the last. So it was later with Rome, and later with Napoleon, and later still with Adolf the Aryan, and still later— It isn't travel that is broadening, stimulating, or educational. Not the traveling itself. Visiting new cities, new countries, new continents, or even new planets, yes . But the travel itself, no . Be it by the methods of the Twentieth Century—automobile, bus, train, or aircraft—or be it by spaceship, travel is nothing more than boring. Oh, it's interesting enough for the first few hours, say. You look out the window of your car, bus, train, or airliner, or over the side of your ship, and it's very stimulating. But after that first period it becomes boring, monotonous, sameness to the point of redundance. And so it is in space. Markham Gray, free lance journalist for more years than he would admit to, was en route from the Neptune satellite Triton to his home planet, Earth, mistress of the Solar System. He was seasoned enough as a space traveler to steel himself against the monotony with cards and books, with chess problems and wire tapes, and even with an attempt to do an article on the distant earthbase from which he was returning for the Spacetraveler Digest . When all these failed, he sometimes spent a half hour or so staring at the vision screen which took up a considerable area of one wall of the lounge. Unless you had a vivid imagination of the type which had remained with Markham Gray down through the years, a few minutes at a time would have been enough. With rare exception, the view on the screen seemed almost like a still; a velvety blackness with pin-points of brilliant light, unmoving, unchanging. But even Markham Gray, with his ability to dream and to discern that which is beyond, found himself twisting with ennui after thirty minutes of staring at endless space. He wished that there was a larger number of passengers aboard. The half-dozen businessmen and their women and children had left him cold and he was doing his best to avoid them. Now, if there had only been one good chess player— Co-pilot Bormann was passing through the lounge. He nodded to the distinguished elderly passenger, flicked his eyes quickly, professionally, over the vision screen and was about to continue on his way. Gray called idly, "Hans, I thought the space patrols very seldom got out here." "Practically never, sir," the other told him politely, hesitating momentarily. Part of the job was to be constantly amiable, constantly watchful of the passengers out here in deep space—they came down with space cafard at the drop of a hat. Markham Gray reminded Bormann of pictures of Benjamin Franklin he'd seen in history books, and ordinarily he didn't mind spending a little time now and then talking things over with him. But right now he was hoping the old duffer wasn't going to keep him from the game going on forward with Captain Post and the steward. "Just noticed one on the screen," the elderly journalist told him easily. The co-pilot smiled courteously. "You must have seen a meteorite, sir. There aren't any—" Markham Gray flushed. "I'm not as complete a space neophyte as your condescending air would indicate, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact, I'll stack my space-months against yours any day." Bormann said soothingly, "It's not that, sir. You've just made a mistake. If a ship was within reasonable distance, the alarms would be sounding off right now. But that's not all, either. We have a complete record of any traffic within a considerable distance, and I assure you that—" Markham Gray pointed a finger at the lower left hand corner of the screen. "Then what is that, Lieutenant?" he asked sarcastically. The smile was still on the co-pilot's face as he turned and followed the direction of the other's finger. The smile faded. "I'll be a makron !" he blurted. Spinning on his heel, he hurried forward to the bridge, muttering as he went. The older man snorted with satisfaction. Actually, he shouldn't have been so snappy with the young man; he hated to admit he was growing cranky with age. He took up his half completed manuscript again. He really should finish this article, though, space knew, he hadn't enough material for more than a few paragraphs. Triton was a barren satellite if he'd ever seen one—and he had. He had almost forgotten the matter ten minutes later when the ship's public address system blurted loudly. BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS! ALL CREW MEMBERS TO EMERGENCY STATIONS. ALL PASSENGERS IMMEDIATELY TO THEIR QUARTERS. BATTLE STATIONS! Battle Stations? Markham Gray was vaguely familiar with the fact that every Solar System spacecraft was theoretically a warcraft in emergency, but it was utterly fantastic that— He heaved himself to his feet, grunting with the effort, and, disregarding the repeated command that passengers proceed to their quarters, made his way forward to the bridge, ignoring the hysterical confusion in passengers and crew members hurrying up and down the ship's passageways. It was immediately obvious, there at the craft's heart, that this was no farce, at least not a deliberate one. Captain Roger Post, youthful officer in command of the Neuve Los Angeles , Lieutenant Hans Bormann and the two crew members on watch were white-faced and shaken, momentarily confused in a situation which they had never expected to face. The two officers stood before the bridge vision screen watching, wide-eyed, that sector of space containing the other vessel. They had enlarged it a hundred-fold. At the elderly journalist's entrance, the skipper had shot a quick, irritated glance over his shoulder and had begun to snap something; he cut it off. Instead, he said, "When did you first sight the alien ship, Mr. Gray?" " Alien? " "Yes, alien. When did you first sight it? It is obviously following us in order to locate our home planet." There was extreme tension in the captain's voice. Markham Gray felt cold fingers trace their way up his back. "Why, why, I must have noticed it several hours ago, Captain. But ... an alien !... I...." He peered at the enlarged craft on the screen. "Are you sure, Captain? It seems remarkably like our own. I would say—" The captain had spun back around to stare at the screen again, as though to reassure himself of what he had already seen. "There are no other ships in the vicinity," he grated, almost as though to himself. "Besides that, as far as I know, and I should know, there are no Earth craft that look exactly like that. There are striking similarities, I'll admit, to our St. Louis class scouts, but those jets on the prow—there's nothing like them either in existence or projected." His voice rose in an attempt to achieve decisiveness, "Lieutenant Bormann, prepare to attack." Suddenly, the telviz blared. Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Be unafraid. We are not hostile. There was quiet on the bridge of the earth ship. Screaming quiet. It was seemingly hours before they had recovered even to the point of staring at one another. Hans Bormann gasped finally, unbelievingly, "How could they possibly know the name of our ship? How could they possibly know the Amer-English language?" The captain's face was white and frozen. He said, so quietly that they could hardly make it out, "That's not all. Our alarms still haven't been touched off, and our estimators aren't functioning; we don't know how large they are nor how far away. It's unheard of—.Somehow they've completely disrupted our instruments." Markham Gray followed the matter with more than average interest, after their arrival at the New Albuquerque spaceport. Not that average interest wasn't high. Finally man had come in contact with another intelligence. He had been dreading it, fearing it, for decades; now it was here. Another life form had conquered space, and, seemingly, had equipment, in some respects at least, superior to humanity's. The court martial of Captain Roger Post had been short and merciless. Free access to the trial had been given to the press and telviz systems, and the newscasts had carried it in its entirety, partially to stress to the public mind the importance of the situation, and partially as a warning to other spacemen. Post had stood before the raised dais upon which were seated SupSpaceCom Michell and four other high-ranking officers and heard the charge read—failure to attack the alien craft, destroy it, and thus prevent the aliens—wherever they might be from—returning to their own world and reporting the presence of man in the galaxy. Markham Gray, like thousands of others, had sat on the edge of his chair in the living room of his small suburban home, and followed the trial closely on his telviz. SupSpaceCom Michell had been blunt and ruthless. He had rapped out, bitingly, "Roger Post, as captain of the Neuve Los Angeles , why did you not either destroy the alien craft, or, if you felt it too strong for your ship, why did you not blast off into space, luring it away from your home planet?" Post said hesitantly, "I didn't think it necessary, sir. His attitude was—well, of peace. It was as if we were two ships that had met by chance and dipped their flags in the old manner and passed on to their different destinations. They even were able to telviz us a message." The SupSpaceCom snapped, "That was undoubtedly a case of telepathy. The alien is equipped in some manner to impose thoughts upon the human brain. You thought the telviz was used; actually the alien wasn't speaking Amer-English, he was simply forcing thoughts into your minds." Markham Gray, watching and listening to this over his set, shook his head in dissatisfaction. As always, the military mind was dull and unreceptive. The ridiculousness of expecting Post to blast off into space in an attempt to fool the other craft in regard to his home planet was obvious. The whole affair had taken place within the solar system; obviously the alien would know that one of Sol's nine major planets was mankind's home. Finding out which one wouldn't be too difficult a job. Roger Post was saying hesitantly, "Then it is assumed that the alien craft wasn't friendly?" SupSpaceCom Michell indicated his disgust with an impatient flick of his hand. "Any alien is a potential enemy, Post; that should be elementary. And a potential enemy is an enemy in fact. Even though these aliens might seem amiable enough today, how do we know they will be in the future—possibly in the far future? There can be no friendship with aliens. We can't afford to have neighbors; we can't afford to be encircled by enemies." "Nor even friends?" Captain Post had asked softly. Michell glared at his subordinate. "That is what it amounts to, Captain; and the thing to remember is that they feel the same way. They must! They must seek us out and destroy us completely and as quickly as possible. By the appearance of things, and partially through your negligence, they've probably won the first round. They know our location; we don't know theirs." The supreme commander of Earth's space forces dropped that point. "Let us go back again. When you received this telepathic message—or whatever it was—what was your reaction? Did it seem friendly, domineering, or what?" Roger Post stood silent for a moment. Finally he answered, "Sir, I still think it was the telviz, rather than a telepathic communication, but the ... the tone of voice seemed to give me the impression of pitying." "Pitying!" Michell ejaculated. The captain was nervous but determined. "Yes, sir. I had the distinct feeling that the being that sent the message felt sorry for us." The SupSpaceCom's face had gone red with indignation. It was three years before another of the aliens was sighted. Three hurried, crowded, harassed years during which all the Solar System's resources were devoted to building and arming a huge space fleet and rushing space defenses. The total wars of the Twentieth Century paled in comparison to the all out efforts made to prepare for this conflict. The second view of the alien ship was similar to the first. This, time the Pendleton , a four-man scout returning to the Venus base after a patrol in the direction of Sirius, held the intruder in its viewer for a full five minutes. Once again, no estimation of its distance nor size could be made. All instruments pertaining to such detection seemed to fail to function properly. And again the alien had sent a message—seemingly, at least, by telviz. We are no danger to you, mankind. Seek your destiny in peace. Your troubles are from within. The Pendleton would have attempted to follow the strange craft, but her fuel tanks were nearly dry and she had to proceed to Venus. Her captain's report made a sensation. In a way, the whole business had been a good thing for Markham Gray. As a free lancing journalist, he'd had a considerable advantage. First, he was more than usually informed on space travel and the problems relating to it, second, he had been present at—in fact, had made himself—the first sighting of the aliens. His articles were in continuous demand in both magazines and newspaper supplements; editors clamored for additional material from his voco-typer. There was but one complaint against his copy—it wasn't alarmist enough, sensational enough. Humanity had been whipped into a state of hysteria, an emotional binge, and humanity loved it. And it was there that Markham Gray refused to go along. He had agreed with poor Captain Post, now serving a life sentence in the Martian prison camps; there had been no sign of hostility from the alien craft. It was man who was preparing for war—and Gray knew of no period in history in which preparations for war did not eventually culminate in one. So it was not really strange that it was he the aliens chose to contact. It came in the early hours of the morning. He awakened, not without a chill of fear, the sound of his telviz set in his ears. He had left it turned off, he knew that. He shook his head to clear it, impatient of the fact that with advancing years it was taking an increasing time to become alert after sleep. He had not caught the message. For a brief moment he thought the sound had been a dream. Then the telviz spoke again. The screen was blank. It said, You are awake, Mr. Gray? He stared at it, uncomprehending. He said, "I ... I don't understand." Then, suddenly, he did understand, as though by an inspired revelation. Why they were able to speak Amer-English. Why their ship looked like a Terran one. Why they had been able to 'disrupt' the Earth ships instruments. He said haltingly, "Why are you here?" We are familiar with your articles. You alone, Mr. Gray, seem at least to seek understanding. Before we left, we felt it our duty to explain our presence and our purpose—that is, partially. "Yes," he said. Then, in an attempt to check the conclusion at which he had just arrived, he added, "You are going from the Solar System—leaving your home for a new one?" There was a long silence. Finally: As we said, we were going to explain partially our presence and purpose, but obviously you know more than we had thought. Would you mind revealing the extent of your knowledge? Gray reached to the foot of the bed and took up his night robe; partly because it was chilly, partly to give himself time to consider his answer. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that. He was alone in this small house; he had no knowledge of their intentions toward him. But he had gone too far now. He said, "Not at all. I am not sure of where we stand, but things should be much clearer, shortly. First of all, your spaceships are tiny. Probably less than ten pounds." About four, Mr. Gray. "Which explains why our instruments did not record them; the instruments weren't disrupted, your ships were really too small to register. That's where we made our first mistake. We assumed, for no valid reason, that you were approximately our own size. We were willing to picture you as non-human and possessing limbs, organs, and even senses different from ours; but we have pictured 'aliens', as we've been calling you, as approximately our own size. Actually, you must be quite tiny." Quite tiny, Markham Gray. Although, of course, the way we think of it is that you are quite huge. He was becoming more confident now; widely awake, it was less strange to hear the words come from his commonplace home model telviz set. "Our second mistake was in looking for you throughout space," he said softly. There was hesitation again, then, And why was that a mistake, Markham Gray? Gray wet his lips. He might be signing his death warrant, but he couldn't stop now. "Because you are not really 'aliens,' but of Earth itself. Several facts point that way. For instance, your ships are minute models of Earth ships, or, rather, of human ships. You have obviously copied them. Then, too, you have been able to communicate with humans too easily. An alien to our world would have had much more trouble. Our ways, our methods of thinking, are not strange to you." You have discovered a secret which has been kept for many centuries, Markham Gray. He was more at ease now; somehow there was no threat in the attitude of the other. Gray said, "The hardest thing for me to understand is why it has been kept a secret. Obviously, you are a tiny form of Earth life, probably an insect, which has progressed intellectually as far beyond other insect forms as man beyond other mammals. Why have you kept this a secret from humans?" You should be able to answer that yourself, Mr. Gray. As we developed, we were appalled by the only other form of life on our planet with a developed intelligence. Why, not even your own kind is safe from your bloodlust. The lesser animals on Earth have been either enslaved by man—or slaughtered to extinction. And even your fellows in the recent past were butchered; man killed man wholesale. Do you blame us for keeping our existence a secret? We knew that the day humans discovered there was another intelligence on Earth they would begin making plans to dominate or, even more likely, to destroy us. Our only chance was to find some refuge away from Earth. That is why we began to search the other stars for a planet similar to this and suitable to our form of life. "You could have fought back, had we attempted to destroy you," Gray said uncomfortably. The next words were coldly contemptuous. We are not wanton killers, like man. We have no desire to destroy. Gray winced and changed the subject. "You have found your new planet?" At last. We are about to begin transportation of our population to the new world. For the first time since our ancestors became aware of the awful presence of man on the Earth, we feel that we can look forward to security. Markham Gray remained quiet for a long time. "I am still amazed that you were able to develop so far without our knowledge," he said finally. There was an edge of amusement in the answering thought. We are very tiny, Mr. Gray. And our greatest efforts have always been to keep from under man's eyes. We have profited greatly, however, by our suitability to espionage; little goes on in the human world of which we don't know. Our progress was greatly aided by our being able to utilize the science that man has already developed. You've noted, for instance, how similar our space ships are to your own. Gray nodded to himself. "But I'm also impressed by the manner in which you have developed some mechanical device to duplicate human speech. That involved original research." At any rate, neither man nor we need dread the future any longer. We have escaped the danger that overhung us, and you know now that we are no alien enemies from space threatening you. We wish you well, mankind; perhaps the future will see changes in your nature. It is in this friendly hope that we have contacted humanity through you, Mr. Gray. The elderly journalist said quietly, "I appreciate your thoughtfulness and hope you are correct. Good luck to you in your new world." Thank you, Markham Gray, and goodbye. The set was suddenly quiet again. Markham Gray stood before the assembled Military Council of the Solar System. He had told his story without interruption to this most powerful body on Earth. They listened to him in silence. When he had finished, he waited for their questions. The first came from SupSpaceCom Michell. He said, thoughtfully, "You believe their words to be substantially correct, Gray?" "I believe them to be entirely truthful, your excellency," the journalist told him sincerely. "Then they are on the verge of leaving the Earth and removing to this other planet in some other star system?" "That is their plan." The SupSpaceCom mused aloud. "We'll be able to locate them when they blast off en masse. Their single ships are so small that they missed being observed, but a mass flight we'll be able to detect. Our cruisers will be able to follow them all the way, blasting them as they go. If any get through to their new planet, we'll at least know where they are and can take our time destroying it." The President of the Council added thoughtfully, "Quite correct, Michell. And in the early stages of the fight, we should be able to capture some of their ships intact. As soon as we find what kind of insect they are, our bacteriologists will be able to work on a method to eliminate any that might remain on Earth." Markham Gray's face had paled in horror. "But why?" he blurted. "Why not let them go in peace? All they've wanted for centuries is to escape us, to have a planet of their own." SupSpaceCom Michell eyed him tolerantly. "You seem to have been taken in, Mr. Gray. Once they've established themselves in their new world, we have no idea of how rapidly they might develop and how soon they might become a threat. Even though they may be peaceful today, they are potential enemies tomorrow. And a potential enemy is an enemy, who must be destroyed." Gray felt sickness well through him "But ... but this policy.... What happens when man finally finds on his borders a life form more advanced than he—an intelligence strong enough to destroy rather than be destroyed?" The tolerance was gone now. The SupSpaceCom said coldly, "Don't be a pessimistic defeatist, Gray." He turned to the admirals and generals of his staff. "Make all preparations for the attack, gentlemen."

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The Puzzle in the Pond 1 CHAPTER I A Stolen Typewriter “Here’s something Miss Pringle can use!” Judy ran her fingers over the tiny, embossed Reward of Merit card as if she couldn’t bear to part with it even for the short time it would be on exhibit at the Roulsville library. “Mrs. Wheatley is still Miss Pringle to you, isn’t she?” asked Peter Dobbs, smiling at his young wife as she knelt beside the open drawer of the old chest where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored. 2 “I do think of her as Miss Pringle,” confessed Judy, “and she probably thinks of me as that noisy Judy Bolton. Prim Miss Pringle is what I used to call her. She left everything in such perfect order, it’s hard for me to believe she and Bob Wheatley lived in our house for two whole months. We won’t ever rent it again, will we, Peter?” “You’re not asking me to promise we won’t, are you?” he countered. “You know how I feel about promises.” “You’re right, too,” declared Judy, reaching into the drawer for another one of Grandmother Smeed’s treasured keepsakes. “Here’s a sewing card worked in cross-stitch. It says: ‘ Promise Little. Do Much. ’ Do you think it would do for the September exhibit?” “I should think so,” Peter replied thoughtfully. “A maxim like that would do for any time of the year. Does the library plan to exhibit a few of these things each month?” “Yes, but just for the school year. Miss Pringle—I mean Mrs. Wheatley says she wants me to arrange them in that little glass case near the library door. These reward-of-merit cards used to be given out at school when Grandma was a little girl. The other card was a sewing lesson. ‘Promise little. Do much,’” Judy repeated, “but how much can a person do in a day? Maybe I won’t try to sort all these treasures this morning.” “You’ve made a good start. I wish I could stay and help you. I always liked treasure hunting,” Peter confessed, “but Uncle Sam expects me to hunt criminals today. We’ll be using an official car, so I’ll leave the Beetle for you to transport your exhibit to the library if you do get it ready. ’Bye, Angel. See you at six.” “You hope,” Judy added as he bent to kiss her. 3 Peter’s time was not his own. Working out of the Resident FBI Agency in the Farringdon Post Office, he might be sent anywhere in the territory. His assignment now was to round up the Joe Mott gang. Judy knew that much, although his work was confidential. It was also dangerous. Each time he left the house she breathed a little prayer for his safe return. “Take care,” was what she usually said, but in her heart the words meant, “Take care of our future. Let all our dreams for our married life in this house come true.” The house had been willed to Judy by her grandmother, and it was so sturdy and well built that she felt sure it would stand there on the slope overlooking Dry Brook as long as the hills themselves. Peter had left the stair door open, and soon Judy heard Blackberry padding up to keep her company. He looked around, the way cats will, and then came into the storeroom to see what Judy was doing. “Hi, Blackberry! You can’t play with these things,” she told him as she continued sorting and arranging the cards that were to be exhibited at the library. The theme for September would be school. She found a few Hallowe’en things and a Columbus Day card which she put aside for October. There were turkeys and prayers of Thanksgiving for November, a pile of Christmas things for December, and a stack of old calendars for January. The stack grew higher and higher. 4 “I do believe Grandma saved a calendar for every year. This is wonderful,” Judy said to herself. “I’ll find some recent calendars and complete the collection. It will be just perfect for the January exhibit.” The library was new, and the built-in exhibit cases were still empty. Nearly all the buildings in Roulsville were new since the flood that had swept the valley and started Judy on the trail of her first mystery. Her own home had been swept away, and her father, Dr. Bolton, had been obliged to move to Farringdon where he still lived and practiced. Only her grandmother’s house, two miles above the broken dam, had stayed the same. “Maybe that’s why I love it,” she thought. And yet she and Peter had made changes. It was a rambling old farmhouse too big for just the two of them so only the downstairs rooms had been changed. Up here in the attic nothing had been disturbed except by Blackberry as he played with the spools in Judy’s sewing room or searched for mice in the other two rooms where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored. She liked having him for company as she worked. Attics and black cats seemed to go together. Judy smiled at this thought. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that at first she didn’t hear the front doorbell ringing downstairs. It rang again more insistently, and she gathered Blackberry in her arms and hurried down the two flights of stairs. It wouldn’t do to leave the cat alone among the things she had collected for the exhibit. 5 “I can’t trust you,” she told him, “even if you are a famous cat.” Blackberry wore a life-saving medal on his collar, and just recently he had worked for the government, or so Judy insisted, ridding the Capitol Building of mice. But when she opened the door he fled through it to prowl around outside like any ordinary cat. The cat startled Holly Potter, Judy’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, who had rung the bell. Obviously she had been running at break-neck speed along the shortcut from her house to Judy’s. “What took you so long? I thought you’d never answer the bell. Quick!” she urged breathlessly. “Maybe we can still head off that green car! There’s a thief in it. He stole my typewriter!” “Your typewriter?” gasped Judy. “Yes, the one you gave me for my birthday. Remember when we traded birthdays so mine wouldn’t come on Christmas? I loved that typewriter, and now—” “We’ll try and get it back,” Judy reassured her. “Come on, Holly!” They were off down the road in the Beetle before Holly had finished telling Judy which way the green car went. “Try Farringdon,” she suggested. “You could see it from the top of the hill if it went toward Farringdon, couldn’t you?” “That would depend on how fast he was going, I should think, but we’ll try it,” Judy promised. 6 “Quick!” Holly urged breathlessly. 7 She turned left at the main road and sped up the long slope out of Dry Brook Hollow. At the top of the hill the world seemed to end but, instead of driving on into the sky the way it looked as if she might, Judy drove down again with miles and miles of winding road ahead of her. There wasn’t a green car in sight. “I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” Judy began. “But I’m sure he went this way,” Holly insisted. “I would have seen him myself if he’d turned toward Roulsville. You know how our road angles off in that direction. Well, I thought if I raced along the shortcut and we took your road maybe we could head him off if he turned toward Farringdon. I have to get my typewriter back. Can’t you drive a little faster?” “Not without turning the car over. We’ll pick up speed on the straight road. Then, if we can’t find him, we’ll report the stolen typewriter when we get to Farringdon. Did he take anything else?” Judy asked. “No, just the typewriter.” “That’s strange.” Judy couldn’t quite picture a thief running into Holly’s house, grabbing her typewriter, and not touching anything else. She had a rare old paperweight and a brand-new tape recorder in the first-floor room she called her study. Either of these things would have been worth more than her typewriter, to say nothing of the valuables stored in what she had once called her forbidden chest. 8 “There was nothing strange about it,” declared Holly. “He would have taken more if I hadn’t surprised him and called Ruth. She was busy with the baby and didn’t pay any attention. Doris had just left in her car—” “That’s it!” Judy interrupted. “The thief probably saw your sister Doris leaving and figured you were all out.” “Well, we weren’t. I was there, and I saw him run out of the house toward a green car. Please drive faster, Judy! I have to get my typewriter back.” And suddenly, like rain from a clear blue sky, Holly burst into tears. She was crying over more important things than a stolen typewriter, Judy knew. It wasn’t easy living with a married sister whose whole interest centered on her own husband and baby. Holly’s other sister was on her way to a teaching job at some private school in Maine. The girls’ uncle had died while Judy and Peter were in Washington. Holly said she had never felt more lost and alone. “First it was my parents and then Uncle David. It’s always this way,” she sobbed. “I told my sisters I wouldn’t dare love them. It’s bad luck for me to love anybody. Even the things I love have to be taken.” “We’ll find your typewriter,” Judy resolved as she drove on toward Farringdon as fast as safety allowed. 9 CHAPTER II Help for Holly Farringdon was a much larger town than Roulsville. Actually, it was a small city and the county seat of a hilly county in northern Pennsylvania. The courthouse, tall and imposing with its clock tower, stood at the corner of Main and Grove streets. Just opposite was the office of the Farringdon Daily Herald where Judy’s brother Horace worked as a reporter. Farther up Grove Street was Dr. Bolton’s combined home and office. “Which way shall we turn?” Judy asked when they came to the corner. Holly shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe my typewriter wasn’t stolen after all.” 10 “ What? ” Judy was so surprised that she nearly hit the curb as they turned the corner. “If we aren’t following a typewriter thief, then what are we doing in Farringdon?” “We are—I mean we were following that green car, and I think my typewriter is in it. It’s just that I—I mean I haven’t told you everything.” “I should say you haven’t,” Judy agreed. “Maybe Horace would help us for the sake of the story.” “I’d be glad to have his help,” declared Holly almost too enthusiastically. “There he is now, walking down Grove Street. Oh dear! Is that Honey with him?” “It usually is,” replied Judy. “They’re practically engaged, you know.” “No, I didn’t know. Good things happen to everyone but me,” was Holly’s doleful comment. “I’ll probably be an old maid and live all alone without even a cat for company.” “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Judy hailed her brother. He and Peter’s sister came over to the side of the car. “Holly thinks her typewriter was stolen,” Judy explained. “On top of all the other trouble she’s had, this was just too much. Have you seen a green car?” “Several of them,” replied Horace. “They’re quite common, or haven’t you noticed? Come to think of it, a green car did roar up Main Street about ten minutes ago. The driver was a boy of about sixteen. Dark hair, striped T-shirt—” “He’s the one,” Holly interrupted. “Do you think we can still overtake him?” 11 “We can try,” replied Judy, “but I’m not making any rash promises. Didn’t you just tell me you’re not sure he is the thief? You didn’t actually see him take your typewriter, did you?” “No, but I did see him running toward that green car, and when I turned around my desk top was empty. Ruth said maybe Doris took it. You know the way sisters are, always borrowing things without asking. But I don’t believe it. Doris knows I need my typewriter. Please drive on, Judy,” Holly pleaded. “We can’t let that boy get away with it.” “I’m afraid he did get away with it,” Horace told her. “If he did take your typewriter, he must be half-way to Ulysses with it by now.” “That’s the town where we turned off when we visited the Jewell sisters,” Honey put in, “on our secret quest, didn’t we, Judy?” “I heard about that. You two girls have all the fun,” Holly complained. “Fun!” Judy echoed, remembering how frightened she and Honey had been. “If that’s fun—” She shivered, and her voice trailed off into thoughts of their latest mystery. “We were drenched to the skin and that criminal, Joe Mott, was after us. I’m glad he’s back in prison. I can’t understand it, though,” Honey continued in a puzzled voice. “Aldin Launt, that artist who works at the Dean Studios, was never picked up. He works right near me, and every time he passes my desk I get the shivers. I thought Peter was going to arrest him.” 12 “So did I,” agreed Judy, “but maybe he’s being watched in the hope he will lead the FBI to the rest of the gang. Peter’s work is so secret that half the time he can’t even discuss it with me.” “Please don’t discuss it now,” implored Holly. “If we’re going to follow that green car—” “You’ll never catch him,” Horace predicted, “and how would you get your typewriter back if you did? A couple of girls couldn’t handle a thief, especially if he’s got a gun on him. I don’t suppose you can make a federal case out of it, but couldn’t you report it to the local police? I’ll call them right now if you say the word.” “What do you think, Judy?” Holly asked. “I’d do it if I were you, Holly,” she advised. “Okay, then,” Horace said with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “Just give me all the details. Then we’ll relax and let the police handle it. Honey and I were on our way to lunch. How about joining us?” Judy looked up at the courthouse clock. “Oh dear! The morning’s gone. I didn’t think it was lunchtime already. I am hungry. Aren’t you, Holly?” The younger girl insisted that she couldn’t eat a thing, but once they were inside the restaurant she changed her mind. “I guess I could eat a hamburger,” she conceded. 13 While Horace went to telephone, the three girls ordered lunch. Holly was still jumpy. She kept tossing her mane of thick brown hair like a restless colt. She wore it perfectly straight in a long pony tail. Judy’s red curls were cut a little shorter than usual, but Honey had let her lovely honey-colored hair grow long to please Horace. Today she wore it loose about her shoulders. The three girls were very different in appearance, but they had one thing in common. All three of them adored Judy’s brother, Horace Bolton. He was a shy-appearing young man. To look at him, no one would suspect that he had once startled the town of Roulsville out of its complacency by racing through the streets on Judy’s ginger colt and crying out, “The dam is breaking! Run for the hills.” Thinking back, Judy realized that since Horace had become a hero, he had changed. There wasn’t a note of timidity in his voice as he talked with the police officer who later came in and quietly seated himself at their table. It was Holly who was frightened. “I—I didn’t think they’d send a policeman,” were her first words. “I can’t be sure of anything. Maybe it’s all a big mistake.” “We’ll take that chance,” the officer replied, smiling as he wrote out his report. “Tell you what, Judy,” Horace suggested as they were leaving the restaurant. “Why don’t you and Holly drive on a ways? Maybe you’ll see that green car parked somewhere along the road. I’ll finish up a little job I’m doing and tell Mr. Lee this looks like a story. He’ll give me the afternoon off to follow it up.” “What about you, Honey? Do you have to go back to work?” asked Judy. 14 “Oh, I guess Mr. Dean would give me the afternoon off if I asked him. I can’t do any work with all that hammering going on anyway. Where shall we meet you?” Honey asked. “At the beaver dam!” exclaimed Judy, suddenly enthusiastic. “Remember, Honey? Violetta said she’d show it to us. I have my camera in the car. Maybe we could take pictures of the beavers.” “It’s a date! Violetta is the younger of the two Jewell sisters,” Honey explained to Holly, “though neither of them is young. They’re such dears! They live in one of the oldest houses in this section of Pennsylvania. It’s like stepping back in time just to visit them.” “I’ll ask them if they have anything for the library exhibit. I have the job of choosing the displays for those new cases in the Roulsville library,” Judy explained. “All right, Horace, we’ll see you and Honey at the beaver dam.” 15 CHAPTER III A Rude Shopkeeper “I hope the beaver dam holds better than that one just above Roulsville,” Holly commented as they started off again. “We have to pass it on the way to school. I remember how it was last term. The boys and girls in the school bus quiet down fast if they happen to glance out the window and see those big pieces of broken concrete. A lot of them lost their homes when that dam broke, just the way you did, Judy. Did you go back afterwards to see if anything could be saved?” 16 “We went back too late, I guess. We didn’t find much of anything. There’s always some looting after a big disaster like that. People are too interested in making sure all their loved ones are safe to worry about their possessions.” Judy paused. She had been younger than Holly was now when the Bolton family’s home in Roulsville had been swept away in the flood, but it still hurt to think about it. “Dad had to treat a lot of people for shock,” she continued as they drove past the Post Office, where Peter’s office was, and entered the outskirts of Farringdon. “Our house was turned over and one wall smashed in. I guess the furniture just floated away.” “It would have to float somewhere, wouldn’t it?” Holly questioned. “I suppose it would, but we never found it. Grandma wanted us to take some of her things,” Judy remembered, “but we thought it would be better to leave her house the way it was and buy everything new. Of course we couldn’t replace the beautiful fruitwood bench Dad had in his reception room or the lady table. That was a lovely period piece that had been in the Bolton family for generations.” “What period?” asked Holly, who was something of an expert on antique furniture. She once had lived with a cousin who collected antique glassware. “Empire, I believe.” “Empire furniture is valuable. Usually it’s pretty solid, too. Why did you call it the lady table?” Holly wanted to know. 17 “That’s the name I gave it when I was a little girl. There were ladies carved on the legs. They held the marble table top on their heads. They had such quiet, patient faces.” Now Judy was thinking back in spite of herself. It had been exciting, furnishing the so-called Haunted House in Farringdon and exposing its “ghosts.” New furniture had been bought, and a few good antiques had been discovered in out-of-the-way shops. Dr. Bolton’s massive oak desk was one such piece. Judy’s dresser with the secret drawer was another. Buying it all by herself had been a real adventure. Only gradually had she come to realize their loss. Judy’s thoughts broke off as she suddenly stopped the car. They had been driving through a small town to the north of Farringdon. A dingy row of gray houses lined the road. Some of their porches had been sheared off in order to widen the highway, and some had been made into shops. Judy had noticed one of the signs: H. SAMMIS Antiques, Used Furniture Bought and Sold “And there’s a green car in the driveway!” exclaimed Holly. “Oh, Judy! Luck is with us after all. That boy may be inside right now trying to sell my typewriter!” “Maybe it’s still in the car. Let’s have a look,” Judy suggested. 18 She parked the Beetle right behind the green car, blocking the driveway. No one seemed to be around so Judy and Holly carefully examined the interior. “Empty! He’s probably trying to sell it. Come on inside,” Holly urged, pulling Judy along with her. “Don’t be in such a hurry. He can’t get out while we’re parked there, and I want to take down his license number! There!” Judy announced when she had it. “Now we’ll go in like any other customers and pretend we want to buy something.” “A typewriter!” agreed Holly. “We’ll just ask. Then, if we see mine, we’ll call the police.” Judy shook her head. She didn’t think it would be that easy, but she was willing to go along with Holly just for the adventure. “If we don’t find your typewriter,” she told her, “we may find some old cards for my collection. Anyway, it will do no harm to go in and look around.” “Look at all the lovely old glassware in the windows,” Holly pointed out as they walked around to the front of the shop. “There’s a blue glass hen just like the one Cousin Cleo has in her collection. And look at those chalkware lambs and that beautiful luster cream pitcher!” Inside the shop it was hard to move around because of all the old furniture crowded into every inch of floor space. Judy had to move a chair to reach the cream pitcher Holly had admired. Before she could touch it, a voice barked at her. “Careful there! You’ll have to pay for anything you break.” 19 “I have no intention of breaking anything,” replied Judy. “I just wanted to see that luster cream pitcher.” “That’s eighty dollars!” “Oh dear! I guess I don’t want it then. We really came in to look at typewriters. You do sell typewriters, don’t you?” Judy asked, looking around the shop to see if the driver of the green car had come in. “New ones,” Holly added. Her typewriter was almost new. “You came to the wrong place for a new typewriter. We sell anything and everything so long as it’s old.” The shopkeeper, a stout, balding man, looked at the two girls as if he considered them slightly stupid. “I meant—almost new,” Holly stammered. “Are you Mr. Sammis? Will you let us see what you have, please?” Judy asked. He showed them a row of ancient typewriters in the back of the shop. They were all of the same make, and all were equally old and dusty. “There aren’t any others?” Holly’s voice held disappointment. “No, that’s all we have.” His tone of voice plainly told the girls he wished they’d go, but Judy wasn’t ready to leave until she had done a little more exploring. “I’m collecting old cards and calendars for a library exhibit,” she explained. “Do you have anything I can use?” “In the box over there. But don’t be all day looking them over. Your car’s parked right in front of mine.” Mr. Sammis had just seen it through the window. 20 “Oh, is that your car?” Judy asked innocently. “We saw a boy driving it this morning.” “Impossible!” he snorted. “It’s been parked right where it is all day.” Judy and Holly looked at each other. They could have made a mistake. Green cars were common, just as Horace had said. The typewriter wasn’t in the shop, and neither was the boy who had been seen driving a green car. Voices came from the upper floor, but they were indistinct. Then, suddenly, something was dropped with a loud thud. Holly jumped. “My wife,” Mr. Sammis explained. “She’s always dropping things. Did you find anything you want?” “Not yet,” Judy replied. She and Holly had been looking through the box of old cards. Near the bottom Judy found a little booklet marked School Souvenir . “Here’s something for the September exhibit,” she said as she opened it. “But that’s for the close of school,” Holly objected, reading over her shoulder. The illuminated verse read: Oh! Swift the time has fled away As fleeting as the rose Since school began its opening day Till now its day of close. The verse was followed by the name of the teacher and pupils in some long-ago country school. Hugh Sammis was one of the names. “Is this for sale?” Judy asked, sure he wouldn’t want to part with it. 21 He laughed, an unpleasant sort of laugh as if he were making fun of her. “It’s junk. I was going to throw it out. You can have it for a quarter.” “I’ll take it then,” Judy decided. “It’s for the beginning of school, too,” she pointed out as she and Holly made their way back to the front of the shop. “Careful there!” Mr. Sammis warned again. It was his own elbow that knocked over the little table with the claw feet, but he looked at Judy as if she had done it. One foot with a claw clutching a glass ball fell to the floor. He picked it up and waved it in Judy’s face. “Now see what you’ve done,” he charged unreasonably. “I told you you’d have to pay for anything you broke. Young people nowadays are all alike. Careless, blundering fools, the lot of them. Come in here for junk and break up my best furniture! This table is fragile—” “I can see it is,” Judy interrupted. “The claw fell off because the table leg was already broken. I can see where it’s been glued. The top is warped, too. It looks as if it had been left out in the rain.” “What if it was? Where else could I leave it when the roadmakers took half my house? I won’t charge you much for it. Only fifteen dollars.” “Fifteen dollars! What are you talking about, Mr. Sammis? I’ll never pay for a table I didn’t break,” Judy declared with indignation. 22 “You won’t, eh? We’ll see about that. You’re Dr. Bolton’s daughter, aren’t you? I’ll just send him a bill for twenty dollars,” the shopkeeper announced with a satisfied chuckle. “Then, if he won’t pay his bill, I won’t pay mine.” “But that isn’t fair!” Judy cried, her gray eyes blazing. “No? Then I’ll make it twenty-five.” “Let’s go before he puts the price any higher,” Holly urged, pulling at Judy’s arm.

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62244

GALACTIC GHOST By WALTER KUBILIUS The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust. "We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover. "Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use. The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob. "To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!" "Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars. Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again. Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars. Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could. Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard. "I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling. "Saw what?" "It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!" "In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?" Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space. "The Ghost Ship!" Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium. "There's nothing there," he said firmly. "It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone. For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou . The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed. When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain. Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth! Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life. Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou . Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship. But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable. Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships? The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars. "There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away. Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space? He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again. But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter. Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him. Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item: " Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father." Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him. Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done. And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth. In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists. Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone. Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason. Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew: Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you! And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind. Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him. Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it. How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care. Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years. He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth. He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze. There was a ship, coming toward him! For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth. For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him. The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him. "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU." With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message. "SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!" He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard: "NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?" Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words. "YES! COMING!" The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair. He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock. The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever. Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion. "It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now." He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him. He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity. He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth. During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused. Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away. And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind. He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him. "I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to." Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body. He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail. Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else. The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage. "How do you feel, Space Man Willard?" "Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled, "Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ." The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man. "You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!" "Yes?" the old captain said. "Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!" A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes. "I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die." Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips. "When will we go to Earth?" he asked. The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him. "You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly. Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew . "Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist. "Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..." "... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!" The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never.... "Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!" "Yes."

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61412

THE COURSE OF LOGIC BY LESTER DEL REY They made one little mistake—very natural—and disastrous! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The male silth plodded forward wearily at sixty miles an hour, pausing only long enough to uproot and wolf down one of the rare scrub trees directly in its path. Its three hundred tons of massive body shook the ground as the great hind legs thumped along, and every cell of it ached with hunger. It was warm blooded, despite its vaguely reptilian appearance. Only meat could satisfy its need for energy. But the great herds lay a thousand miles to the north of this barren land. Inside the silth, the two-pound network of converted nerve cells that was Arnek brooded darkly in self-pity and resentment against the inflexible female logic of his mate. Ptarra had won her point, as she always did; now she might at least have shown some consideration for him and his silth! "Arnek!" The call came sharply on one of the guard frequencies of the mental spectrum. "Arnek, stop lagging and get up here!" He could feel his nerve body tense from horn tip to tail root, but he stifled his response and quickened his pace. Ahead, the trail left by Ptarra's legs led through a gully and up a rise to the lip of a small, stony basin. The four hundred tons of Ptarra's female silth squatted below the edge and the great head was half hidden as it peered downward around a boulder. "Quiet!" Ptarra ordered sharply. Then, as Arnek switched from a thudding run to a smooth, creeping approach, the mental impulse took on a note of triumph. "Look down there and then tell me I don't know a ship trail from a meteor!" The bowl was bright in the glare of the orange sunlight, but at first Arnek saw nothing. Then, as his gaze swept back toward the nearer section, he blinked his great eyes, only half believing what they registered. It was a small thing, hardly taller than Arnek's silth—maybe not even as tall. But it was too regular and obviously artificial, a pointed cylinder, to be a meteorite. Between two of the base fins there seemed to be an opening, with a miniature ramp leading down to the ground. It looked like a delicately precise model of a spaceship from the dawn of time. It was obviously too small to be more than a message carrier. Yet, as he looked more closely, he could see motion. Two tiny creatures, not more than six feet in height, were scurrying around near the base. Bright patches of fur or decoration covered them, and they seemed to move on two of their four limbs. Arnek shivered down the length of his nerves with an ancient distaste for crawling things. "Let's go back," he suggested uneasily. "There's nothing here for us, and I'm hungry." "Don't be silly," Ptarra answered, and the old female superiority was strong in the thought. "Of course it's too small for us; I knew that when I saw the landing trail yesterday evening. It must be an instrument probe, with test animals. If it has telemetering equipment, though—" Arnek tested the three spectra uneasily. At this distance, even a tight beam should be detectable. But he could feel nothing. There was only the steady wash of inertia-gravitic wavules, the electromagnetic noise from the sun and the growing, contemptuous mental leakage from Ptarra. Then he squirmed in embarrassment as his eyes detected the cracked base of the little ship. Obviously, it had landed hard—probably hard enough to ruin instruments and release the two creatures. He should have noticed that at once. There was no time to admit his error, however. Ptarra's silth lunged upright and the great rear legs began pulping ground and rocks in a full charge. Arnek leaped to follow out of old hunting habit. On a down-grade, his lighter silth soon caught up with the other. Below, the two humans swung around at the earth-shaking thunder of the charge and started a frantic scrambling. They were making shrill sounds now, and the extreme low band of the mental spectrum held faint impulses. Ptarra's thoughts lashed against his nerves. "Cut them off! Don't let them back to the probe. They may have destruct conditioning." In the hunt, Arnek had long since become only an extension of his dominant mate. Now he folded his forelegs and dropped his head and neck into a javelin aimed between humans and ships. The smaller of the two was almost at the ramp. At the last moment, moved by a sudden impulse, Arnek dropped his head lower and retracted his neck to soften the blow. He felt the human midge strike against his snout and go caromming off, to land fifty feet away. Dim pain impulses stirred in the low mental background. Anger—or something like it—came from the other creature. Arnek braked and pivoted sharply. The larger human had run forward toward the bloodied smaller figure. But as the silth's head faced the creature, one of the human's arms darted to something strapped about its middle. There was a surprising blast of sound. A stream of tiny, exploding pellets struck against Arnek's snout. He bellowed in annoyance and took a step forward, lifting a foreleg to swat at the midge. It jerked back. Then it darted forward, bending to lift its companion in its forelimbs. Either the gravity here was less than on its home world, or the thing was stronger than it looked. The first leap sent the burdened human backwards more than twenty feet. Then it was bounding off in frantic efforts to reach the further side of the depression where a jumble of rocks might give it cover. There was amusement in Ptarra's thoughts. "If your hunger is so great, why didn't you eat them? They aren't much, of course, but the blood smells sweet enough." Arnek sighed along his nerves, unable to answer. Let Ptarra put it down to another male whim if she liked, but he hadn't thought of eating them before. There had been something cute and pathetic about them. They reminded him of the little gulla he had owned in his youth, in a long-lost, ruined universe. "It had a weapon," he commented, changing the subject. Ptarra rumbled an assent. "I noticed. Interesting conditioning. The probe builders must have superb nerve development to do that to the lower orders. They'll make good silths.... Now let's see what we can find in the probe." She slipped a claw into the base opening and began working it upwards as delicately as the clumsy foreleg would permit. Arnek moved forward to help, but she waved him back impatiently, and he waited meekly until she finished. She was right, of course. As a male, he had no training with mechanisms. He would only have ruined whatever lay inside. It was a marvelously delicate set of machinery ... though the theory behind the engineering seemed rather elementary. Arnek studied what he could of it, growing more puzzled. "Maybe the creatures operated it," he suggested. "What makes you think so?" "I don't know. It just seems somehow—" "Intuition!" Ptarra snorted. Then she seemed less certain. "Yet I can't blame you this time. It does almost look that way. But it's logically impossible. Besides, there are automatic controls for guiding the probe. The builders probably just amused themselves, the way we once put slurry-pods in the gulla pens. Ah, this looks sound enough!" She pulled a tiny box out of the wreckage that had been spread out flat on the ground. With infinite care, she managed to hook one claw over a miniature control. Almost immediately, radio waves began forming a recurrent pattern along their nerves, coming in long and short pulses. Half an hour later, there was another faint quiver of radio waves from space, this time completely modulated. Even Arnek could realize that it was on the same frequency, but dopplered to indicate something approaching their world. He stopped browsing for the few stunted trees and came back to join his mate. Night was just falling. Ptarra led them back toward the rock ledge from which they had first spied the probe. There was a large fissure in the rocks into which they could just squeeze, and which would hide them from the sight of any landing craft. A moon came up, and they could see the depression clearly in its light. Now Arnek saw the larger human slipping across the ground toward the wreck of the probe. It darted about frantically, but with an appearance of purpose. A few moments later, it was retreating, carrying a load of packages with it. "It seems almost intelligent," he said softly. He strained to follow the faint wash of impressions on the lower band. There was something there that struck a familiar chord in his thoughts, but he could not decode it. "Just instinct," Ptarra dismissed it with cool logic. "A female seeking food for its injured mate." Arnek sighed uncomfortably. "It doesn't seem female," he objected. "Another hunch? Don't be silly, Arnek. It has to be a female. The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female. How else could it care for the young? It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for himself. The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all." There was no answer to such logic, other than the vague discontent Arnek felt. And he knew that was only because of his envy of the greater ability of the other sex. He settled back, ruminating hungrily and listening to the signal from space. The little box from the wreck was silent now, but the other signals were stronger. Ptarra nodded. "They're coming. After four hundred years, we have a chance. New silths to breed. A chance to reproduce ourselves and multiply. A new universe for our own." There was immense satisfaction with self in her thoughts. "Well, I earned it!" Arnek could not deny it. It had been more than four hundred years in this galaxy. Eight thousand of them had set out, leaving behind a small, ancient universe being wrecked by the horror of an exploding supernova. They had been driven out from the planetary conquests of a billion years and had sought refuge across intergalactic space to this universe. A hundred of the marvelously adapted silths of their universe had survived the eons of suspended animation to preserve their occupants. And then had come the hunt for new silth forms, since the trip had aged the others beyond the power of reproduction, in spite of all their precautions. Finding a silth form was never easy. There had been only three animals that had served in their entire old galaxy. Only a creature with several pounds of nerve tissues could hold the nuclear proteins of the sentient annas. And that required huge creatures, since nerve tissue was always so thinly scattered in normal flesh. They had toured a quadrant of the new galaxy, studying planet after planet, before they found this world. Here the great beasts were barely sufficiently endowed with nerve fiber. Eight annas had survived this far. Six failed to stand the shock of entry and regrowth in the new silth forms. Now there was only the one pair—Arnek and Ptarra. Left to himself, Arnek would have perished long ago. Their hope of retraining the clumsy forelegs of the silth forms had proved futile, and the nerve capacity was too low for them to exercise their full faculties. The converted nuclei of the cells was never quite efficient, either. And there seemed no hope of ever reproducing their own. Certainly no newly budded anna could survive the metamorphosis into these awkward bodies; that had been almost impossible for mature powers. Nor could a young anna survive long without a silth. Four hundred years! And now—now, he thought, he was tired. It no longer mattered. His home lay in ruins eons away. Let Ptarra worry about it. He twisted his neck back to put his snout under his tail and tried to sleep, while hunger rumbled noisily in his stomach. The sun was glaring down again when he awoke to the nudging of Ptarra's snout, and there was a roaring in the air above. Something rushed downwards, bellowing out thrust against gravity. It was another ship, landing over the wreckage of the first. But it was no monster such as might have carried new and better silth forms. It was hardly larger than the first, though it somehow seemed to be better made. It landed smoothly and squatted on the ground, sending out signals. "Another probe," Ptarra said. There was disappointment in her thoughts, quickly masked by cold logic. "Naturally, they'd wait to check with something like this. There will probably be several probes before they decide they have to investigate personally. All right! We'll give them something to worry about." She was lunging to her feet, just as an opening appeared in the ship. This time something ran out, down the ramp—a tiny gadget of churning tracks and metal carapace, chuffing out shrill little motor sounds. It circled briefly and then headed across the bowl. "Stop it," Ptarra ordered. "It may have a camera, so don't waste time. The less the builders learn about us, the better." Arnek took off. His hunger had so far failed to weaken him, and he was covering the ground at two hundred miles an hour before the little vehicle had picked up a tenth of that speed. At the last moment, it seemed to be aware of him. There was a wash of mental shock and confusion. Then his snout hit the car in a sideswipe that tossed it fifty feet to land on its back. He lumbered forward to squash it, then hesitated. An opening had appeared and two of the tiny humans were staggering out. One was supporting the other. At sight of him, both stopped in shock. For a second, they stood rooted to the ground. Then the larger one began a clumsy effort at running, half carrying the other. Blood left a trail behind them. Arnek could have squashed them with a single thrust of his leg. But he stood irresolutely, observing the garments and headgear they wore, remembering his youth and a gulla draped with a ribbon and bells. They were heading for the rocks nearest them, a long way from where the first two had found refuge. For a second, he felt impelled to turn them and drive them toward the others. Then a wave of amusement from Ptarra checked him. "They'd never reach that far," she called. "They can't survive the crash of their vehicle. Let them go." Arnek felt the faint, murky mental signals so low on the band, and he knew Ptarra was right. They were staggering now, and the smaller one seemed to be only partly conscious. He sighed and scooped up the ground car, carrying it back to Ptarra. This time his mate was making no effort to rip the ship apart. She was staring through one of the tiny ports, trying to fit her great eye against it. And she seemed uncertain. Finally she took the ground car and began dismantling it, looking for automatic or remote controls. There were none. "Maybe the creatures operated it—and the ship," Arnek said. He expected the same reaction the remark had drawn before. This time Ptarra showed no amusement. Her great head shook in puzzlement. "About one time in ten thousand a crazy male hunch comes true," she muttered. "Intuition! It's against all logic. But there are only manual controls here. Where are those silly creatures?" The two that had arrived last were pitifully exposed, just within an opening in the rocks. It was a shallow space, hopeless to defend. The smaller one lay supine, but the larger human faced the two silths, holding his pitiful weapon, and waited grimly until they were almost within reach. This time the explosive pellets were aimed for their eyes. Ptarra dropped her eyelids, swearing as the missiles stung. She reached in with a short foreleg. There was a single shrill cry and the sound of the weapon striking against a rock; the low band was suddenly quiet. Arnek heard a soft gulp. When he looked, the larger human was gone. A sudden shock ran through Ptarra's thoughts. Her great eyes blinked and a huge tongue ran over her lips. "Nerve fiber!" Her shout covered the entire spectrum. "Arnek, there are pounds of nerve fiber in the creature! High grade—better than that in these silth forms. As good as that in any silth. Here, give me the other." She didn't wait for Arnek's help, however. She dragged the corpse out and began working as delicately as the silth body would permit. Her mental signals were a blur. Then she stopped, staring down at what she held. "There—a cavity in the head, filled with nerve fibers. There must be three pounds there alone. What freak of evolution would put them all together in such a vulnerable spot? And yet, there's a certain efficiency about it. It isn't logical—and yet it is." Abruptly, the evidence was gone. "Come on," she ordered. Arnek sighed, and his stomach rumbled a protest. But he ignored it. "What good is it? We surely can't make a silth out of a tiny thing like that?" "Why not?" Contempt for male thought was mixed with smug satisfaction for her own. "We don't use the other cells anyhow. Oh, there will be difficulties. They may be short-lived. But with such high grade fiber, we can risk infiltrating a new one as often as we need. There should be enough of them. They probably have half a dozen to a litter twice a year, like most small forms. Possibly billions of them can live on a single planet. And since they're colonizing other worlds like this one...." Even Arnek could see the logic behind Ptarra's assumption in that. Colonizing would explain the sending out of a male and female in each ship, with ships spread out days apart. It wasn't the most efficient method, but it usually insured against any major accident. His people had used the same method at times. It all seemed quite logical, but Arnek felt a tension of intuition along his entire nerve network. No anna had ever used a silth capable of independent intelligence. There must be something wrong with it. Once they infiltrated the new silth, of course, they could soon convert enough nerves to blank out all control from their carriers. But.... "Their weapons," he cried. "Ptarra, in those bodies, we'd be vulnerable to their weapons. And during the ten days we have to hibernate to grow into their nerves, they'd kill us." Ptarra grunted. "Sometimes," she admitted, "you almost think like a female. They would kill us, of course, if we stupidly stayed where later arrivals could find us. Now come on. We've got to chase the creatures around today until they're tired enough to sleep soundly. And don't let them get near that ship, either!" It was a bitter day for Arnek. His stomach protested, and by the end of the chase, his legs were beginning to weaken. But ahead of them, the two humans were staggering in the light of the setting sun. The smaller was leaning on the larger as they finally found and entered the little cave near the ship that Ptarra had chosen for them long before. Night had fallen before Ptarra was satisfied. The two silths moved forward as softly as they could, but the loud breathing noises went on, and there was no stir of alarm anywhere on the mental band. "Do you remember everything?" Ptarra asked. "You've got to regain consciousness after the first stage. You can do that, if you set your mind to it." "I remember," Arnek agreed wearily. He'd had the whole routine drilled into him repeatedly until he was sick of it. It was like the horror of having her force him to adapt to this present silth. While he had been ready to accept assimilation, she had fought with him and with her own transformation, refusing to admit even his intuition that their race was ended. Only her cold logic had saved them. He could not deny it now. "Be sure you take the smaller male body," she warned again. "Unless that's the female. You found evolution different in these creatures once," he reminded her. For a moment, she was silent. Then there was a mental shrug, and almost amusement as she answered. "Matching sex isn't logically necessary. It might even be an interesting amusement. But I must have the larger body." She began shifting at once. The silth gasped and tried to thresh about in death as Ptarra released control. Arnek sighed to himself and began to follow. It was worse than he remembered. After the centuries, the cells hated to give up their fixed form. The agony of the silth fed back to him, until his withdrawal stopped its heart. But slowly the nuclear matter flowed from the cells and up the pathways to their egress, taking the minimum of nutrient fluid with them. It took nearly an hour, and he could see the thin film of Ptarra already lying over the sleeping human. He began hurrying now, remembering her warning that the humans would not stay here once they wakened to find the two abandoned silths dead. He forced himself over the hateful dryness of the floor, up to the open mouth. Beyond lay the lungs, the circulatory system, and then the strange nerve bundle in the skull. Some of it was ugly, and some was hard. But the last stage was almost pleasant. He had forgotten how unsatisfactory the nerves of the last silth had been. These were like coming home to a friendly world, in a universe that had died too long ago and far away. For a time, he was almost glad that he had not died with it. Then the first allergic reactions began, and he had to relapse into instinct, to let his being fight to save both himself and his host cells from the reaction. He set the first stage up, however. This time he managed with no help from Ptarra. Then he relapsed into unconsciousness, making no effort to control his new silth yet. He'd have to revise when the silth awoke, he told himself. But it was only a dream order, half completed.... It was a sudden painful pressure of acceleration that finally brought him out of his torpor. He felt half sick, and he could vaguely sense that the new silth was fevered and uncomfortable. But, amazingly, it was sitting up. And around it was a room bigger than the whole ship had seemed, and controls under its hands, and fantastic equipment. "It's about time," Ptarra's thoughts reached him. They were weak now, since it was hard to transmit in a partial stage, but they were cold and sure. "I've been aware for hours, while the silths reached the ship and took off. We've been off planet for at least an hour. Long enough to study their body controls and to learn how the ship operates." Arnek sighed to himself, while the pressure of tension refused to leave. "Are you sure?" "Of course I'm sure! These are primitive machines, and I learned most of it from dismantling the first. They're primitive—but they're logical enough for understanding. I can even control the silth when she isn't aware." The larger human suddenly moved the controls, then jerked its hand back, staring at it. Words came to the ears of the silth in which Arnek rode. "I'm sick, Luke. I've got the twitches." The words brought stirrings strongly on the low band, almost but not quite understandably. They also brought a vocal reply from the other human. "Be glad you can twitch. Some bug we picked up, but it's better than being eaten. We're in the clover, kid. Maybe we still got more cop ships tailing us, but let 'em look. When they find the dinosaurs and what's left of our ship, they'll stop looking. The heat's going to be off! We can get back to Earth in a year or so and really live." Ptarra's thoughts cut through Arnek's efforts to understand. "Reproduction feelings," she reported in satisfaction. "They must have higher fertility than I hoped if they can think of it while sick." Then her thoughts sharpened. "Take over your silth!" The human at the board slumped abruptly. Arnek lashed out from the converted cells, felt a brief protest, and then was alone in the brain of the silth. He could not yet control it, but it had no independent will. "There is food and water near if we have to rouse from hibernation while we grow into these silths," Ptarra reported. "Now—help me if you can." Arnek let his weak thoughts blend into hers, trying to give strength as she had often done to him. She was straining her utmost will. Slowly and in jerks, the arm moved across the control board, and clumsy fingers managed to move controls. And at last, from Ptarra's mind, Arnek began to see the plan. There was fuel enough to bring them at maximum speed across an eddy of the galaxy toward the lone sun they had found long before. There a single planet swung in orbit—a planet with food but no dangerous animal life. And there they could wait and grow strong, and multiply as their silths multiplied. They could reach it almost as soon as they came out of hibernation finally, and it would be a safe haven in its isolation. There would be no fuel for further travel. But that could wait, while their numbers grew, and they could restore their lost technology and weapons with the clever hands of the human silths. Then they could take over the galaxy—as they had taken the one so long away! The hands fumbled under the limited control, but they moved across the board. And the automatic pilot was finally set and sealed. "Logic!" Arnek thought softly, and there was wonder at a mind like Ptarra's that could achieve such understanding of even alien mechanisms. Yet under it there was still a cold knot of fear along his nerves. Ptarra's thoughts had begun to fade from the strain and the long interruption to her hibernation. But now she caught momentary control again. There was appreciation in them for his praise. And then there was amusement. "Logic," she agreed. "But perhaps intuition isn't too bad for a male. You've been right twice." "Twice?" Arnek asked. He'd been somehow right that the silths controlled their own ships, of course. But.... "Twice," Ptarra said. "I've just realized my silth is a male, as you suggested it might be. Amusing, reversing the sexes, isn't it?" She tried to say something else, but the strain was too much, and full hibernation swept her mind away from that of Arnek. Arnek sat frozen for a time in his silth, knowing that it was also male. Then he turned it somehow to face the lost galaxy where his race had known its day and now entered its eternal night.

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20003

The Changelings When did the Washington Post swap identities with the New York Times ? One day, it seemed, the Post rollicked readers with its cheeky personality and the next suffocated them with the sort of overcast official news that made the Times famous. Meanwhile, the Times sloughed its Old Gray Lady persona for the daredevilry that was the Post franchise. The switch dawned on me one morning 10 years ago as I found myself flipping through the Post because I had to, not because I wanted to--and reading the Times for the joy of it, not because it was the newspaper of record. I know this sounds like the beginning of an encomium for the Times at the expense of the Post , but it's not. When the papers traded places, they exchanged virtues as well as vices . In the traded virtue category: The Times takes a lot of risks. It has turned its back on the five boroughs to become a national newspaper, even purchasing the Boston Globe , while the Post has burrowed deeper locally. Its columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich dish the sort of sauce Nicholas von Hoffman and the young Richard Cohen once served at the Post . It continues to innovate, with new sections like Monday's "Business Day" (a k a "The Information Industries") and Saturday's "Arts and Ideas," while the Post hasn't contributed anything significant to the template since the "Style" section in 1969. Its Sunday magazine is the best general interest publication in the world. The Post 's isn't. Other traded virtues: The Times prints in color, the Post doesn't (yet). The Times sports an aggressive and handsome design. The recent Post redesign aches like a bad face lift. Times Editorial Page Editor Howell Raines writes barrelhouse editorials demanding action--such as the resignation of Janet Reno--that stir substance and fanfaronade. The Post editorial and op-ed pages are so evenhanded that if Scotty Reston were resurrected, his soft gas would appear there, alongside that of Jim Hoagland. And the Times seasons its reporting with opinion, while the once liberal-and-proud-of-it Post prides itself on cool neutrality (some would count this as a swapped vice and not a swapped virtue). On the news side, Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. boasts he's so bias-free that he doesn't vote. On the vice side of the exchange, the Times ... takes a lot of risks. It's now the primary exponent of what Post ie Bob Woodward famously called the "holy shit" story--pieces so astonishing that you scream spontaneous profanities when you read them. The downside of holy shit stories is that they can turn out to be wholly bullshit, as Woodward learned in 1981, when a reporter under his editorial watch, Janet Cooke, got caught making up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. In its pursuit of holy shit, the Times routinely spins out of control. In 1991, it published the name of the woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape--for no particular reason--and then apologized for it. That same year, the paper digested Kitty Kelley's spuriously sourced Nancy Reagan biography on Page 1. In a transparent lunge for a Pulitzer Prize in early 1996, the Times published a seven-part series alleging that the downsizing of the American workforce was creating "millions of casualties." Actually, job creation was booming. Later that year, the paper spread its legs for the theory that TWA Flight 800 was downed by foul play, based on the discovery of "PETN" residues in the wreckage. The Times reported: "Law enforcement officers said it was impossible to know, for now, whether the explosion was caused by a bomb or a missile because PETN is an explosive component commonly found in both. Still, the discovery would seem to knock from contention the theory that mechanical failure caused the airplane to explode on July 17, killing all 230 aboard ." (Emphasis added.) Eventually, the Times and the investigators abandoned the PETN/bomb theory for the mechanical failure theory. Just this spring, two reckless Times stories slid off the road. Gina Kolata prematurely announced a cancer cure (while shopping a book proposal on the subject) and Rick Bragg botched a simple story about police corruption in small-town Alabama. Bragg, a writerish reporter who would be at home in Style, earned in the June 9 Times . The jailed sheriff spent 27 months behind bars, not 27 years, as Bragg originally reported. Bragg also got the age of the crusading newspaper editor wrong, misstated the paper's circulation, and mistakenly described the method by which the sheriff defrauded the government (the sheriff cashed checks improperly made out to him; he did not cash checks made out to the government). Horrible! Just horrible! But consider the alternative. Who wants to read a porcelain white newspaper that has flushed all its holy shit? Whose reporters drive Volvos to work? The Post isn't powered by Volvo--yet. But in adopting Old New York Times values of cautiousness and fairness and dullness, in striving to become the new Newspaper of Record, the Post has lost its verve. Sometimes a loss of verve is not a bad thing. Compare the Times and Post coverage of the China satellite story. In the Times , Jeff Gerth implies that illegal campaign donations from China + the extravagant campaign donations by Loral Space & Communications' chief executive to Democratic coffers = Clinton's OK of U.S. satellite launches. The Post 's sober coverage expands the theme to detail how the president was as happy to fulfill the satellite dreams of the Republican businessman from Hughes who lobbied heavily and donated sparingly as he was to satisfy the Democratic businessman from Loral who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars (see John Mintz's June 25 article, "How Hughes Got What It Wanted on China"). The Post 's version is probably closer to the facts, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've enjoyed the Times ' sensationalist coverage more. Of course the Post doesn't tiptoe all the time. Woodward's 1996 campaign finance pieces struck a chord that still rings, and I predict a similar impact for Barton Gellman's two-part series last week about how the United States and China nearly went to war in 1996 (click here and here). At its best, the Post can still swarm a breaking news story like Flytrap. But at its worst, it sits on hot news. In 1992, the paper delayed its exposé of masher Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., until after the election, thereby assuring his return to the Senate. In 1994, it spiked Michael Isikoff's Paula Jones reporting, so he left for Newsweek , where he has led the Flytrap story. Timesmen don't pay much attention to the Post , except to periodically raid the paper--as if it were a minor league team--for some of its better players. ( Post defectors include Celestine Bohlen, Gwen Ifill, Julia Preston, Michael Specter, Patrick Tyler, Patti Cohen, and David Richards--who defected back. Few careers, outside of E.J. Dionne's, have been made by going the other way.) But it should pay closer attention. It desperately needs something like the Style section, where it can run imprudent stories that readers are dying to read but have yet to acquire the Heft and Importance of a New York Times News Story. Then again, if the Times were to embrace the virtue of a Style section (or is that a vice?), would its news sections lose their current virtue of attitude? Post ies, on the other hand, obsess on the Times . Last month at the Post 's annual "Pugwash" editorial retreat, outgoing Managing Editor Robert Kaiser began his speech with the preposterous boast that the Post , with a staff half the size of the Times ', "does more for its readers, day in and day out." Kaiser obviously lusts for the Old Times as he repeatedly calls for "authoritative journalism" and higher journalistic "standards," and petitions Post ies to be more intellectual and creative. "Authoritative, creative journalism that meets the highest standards must have intellectual content," Kaiser says at speech's end as he road-wrecks his themes. Somebody get this editor an editor! The question of how the audacious paper turned stodgy floats over the Post newsroom like a thought balloon. The easy answer: Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee departed in 1991 after 26 years at the top. This theory singles out current Executive Editor Downie for abuse, but complacency took root as early as 1981, when the Post 's cross-town competitor, the Washington Star , folded, allowing the fat beast to diddle all it wanted without paying a price. When Donald Graham took over as publisher, he picked Downie as the editor who would help steer the paper away from the Georgetown elites and toward the masses, away from national competition and straight at the suburban dailies. You're reading the paper they wanted to make. Don Graham's biggest handicap is that he's the publisher who came after Katharine, and he's fearful that he'll blow her legacy. Downie's is that he came after Bradlee, and he's afraid he'll blow his. Who remembers the guys who canoed after Lewis and Clark? No wonder they operate the paper as if the frontier has closed behind them. In that context, Graham's conservatism makes business sense. His paper claims the highest reader penetration in the nation and is immensely profitable. Warren Buffett, a major stockholder in the company, whispers into his ear that he's a business genius. Why disturb the money-making machine? The last time the paper took an editorial risk was in 1986, when it barred no expense in relaunching the Washington Post Magazine as a prestige Sunday magazine on the scale of the New York Times Magazine . But the Magazine never got to compete with the Magazine : It was bushwhacked by a black talk-radio demagogue who unfairly labeled the debut issue racist and targeted the paper with demonstrations and a boycott. Its momentum shattered, the extravagantly funded Washington Post Magazine limped along for a couple of years until the Post abandoned its grand financial and editorial ambitions and downscaled it. Various sections of the Post have improved since then--it has invested heavily in zoned suburban coverage, expanded its business page, improved the quality of its travel section, extended the heft of its sports coverage, experimented with an advertorial insert about consumer electronics, and added a monthly midbrow science/history section ("Horizon")--but it's taken no publishing risks. The boldest Post stroke in recent years came this spring when Downie dethroned Kaiser as managing editor and appointed Steve Coll, a 39-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning whiz, who most recently served as Sunday magazine editor/publisher. Coll's vision for the Post , also laid out in a Pugwash speech, sounds like a description of the New New York Times : "[T]he future of the Post depends mightily on our ability to excel at enterprise journalism--on our ability to think more creatively, to tear the skin off of our subjects more often, to write better, to go deeper, to be more alive, to make more of a difference to readers." Good luck, Steve, you'll need it. Perhaps the Times derives its edge from its succession politics. Whereas Ben Bradlee served as Post editor-for-life, the Times places an informal term limit on its executive editor job, and this turnover has helped to reinvigorate the paper: Times executive editors know they must make their mark in haste, before their tenure is over. A.M. Rosenthal reinvented the paper during his tenure from 1977 to 1986, stealing from Clay Felker's playbook to explode the Times into a many sectioned national paper. His successor, Max Frankel, brought vivid writing to the paper from 1986 to 1994, making sure that one story made it to Page 1 every day just because it was fun to read. Joseph Lelyveld, who took over from Frankel, has stayed their courses. Meanwhile, the 56-year-old Downie is now seven years into the job. If he were a Times man, they'd be farming him out to write a column right about now. Instead, he's ensconced like the pope.

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20004

Welcome to SLATE An introduction and apologia. By Michael Kinsley The name? It means nothing, or practically nothing. We chose it as an empty vessel into which we can pour meaning. We hope SLATE will come to mean good original journalism in this new medium. Beyond that, who knows? Good magazines are exercises in serendipity. Credit--or blame--for the name "SLATE," by the way, goes to David Weld, then of Microsoft, now of Cognisoft Corp. A Seattle cyberwag says that the name "SLATE" is appropriate, because whenever he asks anyone from Microsoft, "How's your project coming along?" the answer he usually gets is, "'s late." SLATE , in fact, has been reasonably prompt. Less than six months ago, it was a four-page memorandum and a single Internet naif. SLATE is not the first "webzine," but everyone in this nascent business is still struggling with some pretty basic issues. Starting an online magazine is like starting a traditional paper magazine by asking: "OK, you chop down the trees. Then what?" To be honest, we are running late on a few things. For the reader--you--there is good news and bad news here. The good news is that our billing system isn't ready yet. We intend to charge $19.95 a year for SLATE. That is far less than the cost of equivalent print magazines, because there's no paper, printing, or postage. But $19.95 ($34.95 for two years) is more than zero, which is what Web readers are used to paying. We believe that expecting readers to share the cost, as they do in print, is the only way serious journalism on the Web can be self-supporting. Depending completely on advertisers would not be healthy even if it were possible. And we want to be self-supporting. Indeed one of SLATE's main goals is to demonstrate, if we can, that the economies of cyberspace make it easier for our kind of journalism to pay for itself. Most magazines like SLATE depend on someone's generosity or vanity or misplaced optimism to pay the bills. But self-supporting journalism is freer journalism. (As A.J. Liebling said, freedom of the press is for those who own one.) If the Web can make serious journalism more easily self-supporting, that is a great gift from technology to democracy. For the moment, though, SLATE is yours for free. So enjoy. We expect to start requiring registration in a few weeks, and to require payment beginning Nov. 1. The bad news for readers is that some features aren't quite ready yet. Prime among them is "The Fray," our reader-discussion forum. Meanwhile, though, please e-mail any comments you may have to slate@msn.com. We'll be publishing a traditional "Letters to the Editor" page until The Fray is up and running in a few weeks. We especially need, and appreciate, your comments in these early weeks. Every new magazine is a "beta" version for a while, especially a new magazine in a new medium. SLATE has gotten enormous hype--some of it, to be sure, self-induced, but much of it not. We appreciate the attention. But of course, it also makes us nervous. We have a smaller budget and staff than most well-known magazines--even smaller than some webzines. We don't claim to have all the answers. But, with your help, we plan to have all the answers by Christmas. [LINK TO TEXT BBB] So What's in It? First, let me urge you to read a special page called Consider Your Options. This page explains and executes the various ways you can receive and read SLATE. If you don't like reading on a computer screen, for example, there's a special version of SLATE that you can print out in its entirety, reformatted like a traditional print magazine. If you don't mind reading on a screen but hate waiting for pages to download--and hate running up those online charges from your Internet provider--you will soon be able to download the whole magazine at once and read it offline. Also on the Consider Your Options page, you can order SLATE to be delivered to your computer by e-mail. (Caution: This may not work with your e-mail system.) We'll even send you SLATE on Paper , a monthly compilation of highlights from SLATE, through the U.S. Mail. (The cost is $29 a year. Call 800-555-4995 to order.) Individual copies of SLATE on Paper will be available exclusively at Starbucks. And selected articles from SLATE will also appear in Time magazine. While you're on the Consider Your Options page, please read about how to navigate around SLATE. We use page numbers, like a traditional print magazine, and have tried to make it as easy as possible either to "flip through" the magazine or to and from the Table of Contents. OK, But What's in It??[STET double "??"] SLATE is basically a weekly: Most articles will appear for a week. But there will be something new to read almost every day. Some elements will change constantly. Other elements will appear and be removed throughout the week. Every article will indicate when it was "posted" and when it will be "composted." As a general rule the Back of the Book, containing cultural reviews and commentary, will be posted Mondays and Tuesdays, the longer Features will be posted Wednesdays and Thursdays, and the front-of-the-book Briefing section will be posted Fridays. If you miss something, you can easily call it up from our archive, "The Compost."( THIS NEEDS TO BE A HOT LINK) Let me try to describe a typical issue of SLATE. The Readme column will not always be as solipsistic as this one. It will usually be a commentary on public affairs by one of SLATE's editors. Several regular departments in the Briefing section are attempts at "meta-news": the news about the news, a sense of how the week's big stories are being played and perceived. The Week/The Spin takes a dozen or so topics, from this week's election-campaign developments to the latest big book from Knopf, and analyses, as objectively [LINK TO TEXT CCC]as possible, the spin they're getting, the sub-angles that are emerging, and so on. In Other Magazines uses the covers and contents of Time , Newsweek , etc., as a handy measure of what the culture considers important. (We aim to have these magazines in SLATE even before they reach the newsstands or your mailbox.) The Horse Race tracks the presidential candidates like stocks, as priced by the opinion polls, the pundits, and a genuine market in political candidates run out of the University of Iowa. Our man William Saletan will compute and analyze changes in the pundits index. The Gist, by contrast, is SLATE's effort to provide a quick education on some current issue in a form as free of spin as possible. Also free of quotes, anecdotes, and other paraphernalia. The only 1,000 words you'll have to read when you might rather read nothing at all. In a weekly department called Varnish Remover, political consultant Robert Shrum will deconstruct a 30-second TV spot from the election campaign. You can download a video or audio clip of the spot itself. "Assessment" will be a short, judgmental profile of some figure in the news. (Coming up soon: James Fallows on Wired magazine's godfather, Nicholas Negroponte.) Stanford economist Paul Krugman writes The Dismal Scientist, a once-a-month column on economic policy. (See his debut essay in this issue, about the economic war within the Clinton administration.) University of Rochester economist Steven Landsburg writes monthly on "Everyday Economics," using economic analysis to illuminate everyday life. (His first column, in our next issue, will explain how sexual promiscuity can actually reduce the spread of AIDS.) "The Earthling" will be a monthly column by Robert Wright, contributor to the New Republic and Time , and author of the acclaimed book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal . Other regular Briefing features will include a Press column by our deputy editor, Jack Shafer. Doodlennium is our weekly cartoon strip by Mark Alan Stamaty, whose "Washingtoon" appeared for many years in the Washington Post and Time . Our SLATE Diary will be an actual daily diary, written and posted every weekday by someone with an interesting mind. Our first diarist is David O. Russell, writer and director of Flirting With Disaster . Our second diarist will be novelist Muriel Spark. Can There Possibly be More? Our Features section begins each week with the Committee of Correspondence, our e-mail discussion group. The committee is run by Herbert Stein, a former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers best-known now for his witty columns in the Wall Street Journal . We have great hopes for e-mail as a medium of debate that can combine the immediacy of talk-television with the intellectual discipline of the written word. We hope for something halfway between The McLaughlin Group and the correspondence page of the New York Review of Books . Will it work? Check out our first attempt--Does Microsoft Play Fair?--and let us know what you think. The Features section is also where we run longer articles [LINK TO TEXT DDD] and occasional humor pieces (that is, pieces that are intentionally, or at least aspirationally, humorous). This week in The Temptation of Bob Dole, SLATE's Washington editor, Jodie Allen, cruelly analyzes the arguments for a tax cut. Social critic Nicholas Lemann writes on Jews in Second Place, about what happens to American Jews as Asians replace them at the top of the meritocracy. And the legendary recluse Henry David Thoreau emerges to give SLATE readers an exclusive peek at his new Web page. In SLATE Gallery, we have a continuous exhibition of computer-based art. You may like or dislike this stuff (we'll have plenty of linked commentary to help you decide). What appeals to us about computer art is that SLATE can show you not reproductions, but the actual art itself. We start with an offering by Jenny Holzer. This week's reviews include Ann Hulbert's book review of Miss Manners' latest encyclical; Sarah Kerr's television review of the changing fashions in season finales; Larissa MacFarquhar's High Concept column, about how managed care could improve psychotherapy; and Cullen Murphy's The Good Word, about the difference between "Jesuitical" and "Talmudic." In general, SLATE's Back of the Book will contain a weekly book review, alternating television and movie reviews, and a rotating menu of columns on music (classical and popular), sports, web sites, and other topics. Jeffrey Steingarten will be writing monthly on food ("In the Soup"), Anne Hollander on fashion ("Clothes Sense"), and Margaret Talbot on "Men and Women." Audio and video clips will be offered where appropriate. Every issue will have a poem, read aloud by the author, with text. In this issue is a new poem by Seamus Heaney. And coming up soon, two additional Back of the Book features: an interactive acrostic puzzle, and a stock-market contest. Does SLATE Have a Slant? SLATE is owned by Microsoft Corp., and that bothers some people. Can a giant software company put out a magazine that is free to think for itself? All we can say is that Microsoft has made all the right noises on this subject, and we look forward to putting the company's hands-off commitment to the test. But the concern strikes me as misplaced. In a day of media conglomerates with myriad daily conflicts of interest--Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Disney-ABC--how can it be a bad thing for a new company to begin competing in the media business? A journalist who worries about Microsoft putting out a magazine is a journalist with a steady job. Readers may also wonder whether SLATE will have a particular political flavor. The answer is that we do not set out with any ideological mission or agenda. On the other hand, we are not committed to any artificial balance of views. We will publish articles from various perspectives, but we will not agonize if the mix averages out to be somewhere other than dead center. [LINK TO TEXT EEE] A good magazine, though, does develop a personality, an attitude, [LINK TO TEXT FFF]and some prejudices--even crotchets. A few of SLATE's are already becoming clear. In discussing current events, we have a preference for policy over politics. We'd rather discuss the effect of Bob Dole's tax-cut proposal on the economy than its effect on Bill Clinton. Within the policy arena, we seem to have a special fondness for economics. This was not planned; it's one of those serendipitous developments I mentioned. Whether it reflects good luck or bad luck is a matter of taste (yours). Finally, we intend to take a fairly skeptical stance toward the romance and rapidly escalating vanity of cyberspace. We do not start out with the smug assumption that the Internet changes the nature of human thought, or that all the restraints that society imposes on individuals in "real life" must melt away in cyberia. There is a deadening conformity in the hipness of cyberspace culture in which we don't intend to participate. Part of our mission at SLATE will be trying to bring cyberspace down to earth. Should be fun. Thanks for joining us. Michael Kinsley is editor of SLATE. TEXT AAA: No, this is not a link to the Cognisoft home page. As a general rule, we plan to avoid hyperlinks to outside sites in the text of articles, and to group them at the end instead. It's a small illustration of our general philosophy--better call it a hope--that, even on the Web, some people will want to read articles in the traditional linear fashion--i.e., from beginning to end--rather than darting constantly from site to site. Go back. TEXT BBB: Only kidding. Easter. Go back. TEXT CCC: Objectivity, we hope, will distinguish this feature from Newsweek 's "Conventional Wisdom Watch," which is often an effort to set the spin rather than describe it. Anyway, the "CW Watch" was a rip-off of a similar feature in the New Republic when I was the editor there. And TNR 's feature itself was lifted from Washington, D.C.'s, City Paper , which was edited at the time of the theft by Jack Shafer, now deputy editor of SLATE. Go back. TEXT DDD: Those dread words "longer articles" raise one of the big uncertainties about this enterprise: How long an article will people be willing to read on a computer screen? We have several answers to this question: 1) We don't know. Clearly it's less than on paper, but how much less is uncertain. 2) We're determined to test the outer limits. 3) We'll do our best, graphically, to make reading on screen a more pleasant experience (suggestions welcome). 4) We'll also make SLATE as easy as possible to print out. 5) This will become less of a problem as screens are developed that can be taken to bed or the bathroom. 6) Two thousand words. Or at least we're starting--optimistically, perhaps--with the hope that 2000 words or so is not too much. (By contrast, a typical print-magazine feature or cover story might run anywhere from 5000 to 15,000 words.) At least among non-cyberheads, the computer-screen problem seems to be everyone's favorite conversational thrust with regard to SLATE. In recent months I've been amazed to learn of the places and postures in which people like to read magazines. Bed and bath are just the beginning. At a Seattle dinner party, a woman made the interesting point that her problem isn't the screen: It's the chair. Even "ergonomic" computer chairs are designed for typing, not for reading. For this woman, and for others who may feel the same way, we have asked several furniture designers to sketch a real computer reading chair--one you can curl up in with your mouse and your cup of Starbucks and read SLATE online. That feature will appear in a week or two. Go back. TEXT EEE: In this regard we are more like the newsmagazines-- Time , Newsweek , U.S. News & World Report --than the overtly political magazines such as the New Republic , National Review , or the Weekly Standard . Each of the newsmagazines may have an identifiable political tilt. But pushing a particular line is not what they are fundamentally about, and knowing where they average out won't tell you what any individual article will say. Go back. TEXT FFF: This is different from "attitude"--that free-floating, supercilious cynicism that is much prized in the culture of cyberspace. We may develop an attitude--a set of prejudices derived from logic and evidence, as best we can determine them--but we'll leave "attitude" to the kids. Go back.

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TIME IN THE ROUND By FRITZ LEIBER Illustrated by DILLON [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable! From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again. The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled. The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!" A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog. Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice: "Kill 'em, Brute." The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard. Butch yawned. "What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch." "I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?" "That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?" "I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight. "A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed." "Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer. "I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail." "What's a garbage pail?" "I don't know, but it sounds great." The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously. "Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance. Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight. The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think." He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet. "Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?" "How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness. "I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory." "I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended. "Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think." "About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness. The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again." "You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age." "We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't." "Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older." "I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?" "The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses." "But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?" "They can't. It's impossible." "Yes, but suppose they did all the same." "You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff." "I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director." "They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him. "They will not. I won't let 'em." "It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six." "Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?" The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?" Butch scowled. "How about it, Butch?" Still Butch did not seem to hear. The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?" The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself." "You could walk us over there." "Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't." "While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy." Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS. He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS. With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others. Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master. "Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy." "Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them. Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field. Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away. It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress. The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys. "There's the Theater," Joggy announced. "I know ," the Butcher said irritably. But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp. "My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting." "Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era. "Wrong millennium," Hal said. "Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies." Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?" "They won't let me in, either." "Yes, they will. You're five years old now." "But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully. "The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference." Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy. Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury. Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you." The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old." "You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside." "Why?" "I don't exactly know, but something." "Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement." "They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you." "Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically. Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up. But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily. "Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands." "Of course not," Hal said irritably. "Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed. The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall. "I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said. The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force. "I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher." But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor. "Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow." Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there. The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other. They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them. Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down. The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow. But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys. Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather. Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony. Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant. "The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though." The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future." Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right." "The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky." Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?" "That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it." "I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?" "Why—er—you see, Joggy—" The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering." As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time. He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag. "More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in. Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other. Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!" But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble. "Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?" "Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—" Once more the interpreter helped him out. "The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them." "Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!" " I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?" Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?" "I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?" "But how did you get in—Butcher?" The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher." "Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here." "The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle. The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble. "Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em." "Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—" "I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling." "You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—" "I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal. "It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction." "Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment. "You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired. The Butcher folded his arms and scowled. The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself." There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future. "This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat. "Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously. "Hah!" The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer. "That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!" "Butcher!" Hal admonished. Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down. "A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period." In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section. "Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged. Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs. "Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy. "Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast. "I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it." "Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!" The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction. Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth. "The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said. A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience. The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand. "I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined. In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter. Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out. "There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient." At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!" The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc. Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step. The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic 'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth. Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror. The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out. Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head. "Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!" The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher. "We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats." The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech. Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them. "Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled. The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out. For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously. "We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience." Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted. "Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men." Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth. He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"

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50848

SOLDIER BOY By MICHAEL SHAARA Illustrated by EMSH [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't. In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come. — Scandinavian legend Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement. There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them. After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness. "Well, I never," a nice lady said. "What's he just standing there for?" another lady said. And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers. The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind. Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him. The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes. "Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?" Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?" The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan. "C'n I go now, Jim?" Dylan turned and nodded. "Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift. "Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?" The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time." He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold. After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again. The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army. When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something. For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut. In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut. The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back. In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had. This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip. An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage. Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities. This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly. By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?" Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it. But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance. "See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...." It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was. "There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is." Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move. "We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet. "Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then." For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action. Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine. Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time. He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip. Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all. Once he had even studied military tactics. He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain. He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands. Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut. Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that. When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire. "Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?" Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?" His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack. "We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...." Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?" "Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford." Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like." It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask." The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people. "Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?" Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody." It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened. Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice." "The damn fool!" Rossel exploded. "Who?" "Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...." "You think one of your people did it?" Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?" "Why?" "Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...." It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily, "Maybe an animal?" Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut." The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white. "So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again." "Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask." He started away but Dylan caught his arm. "Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire." Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands. He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire. All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us? No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know. Were they small? Little animals? Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it. He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel. He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun. The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow. By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting.... A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him. He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him. Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope. "Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that." Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it." "But they have a contract!" The soldier grinned. The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said: "Who cut that wire, Cap?" Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it." Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it." The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet. "Telepathy?" asked Dylan. "Might be." "Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?" Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before. "Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor." He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending. Then Rossel jumped. "My God!" Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?" After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries." Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three. When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up." Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow. "You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship." The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints. The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed. He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave. That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun. The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold. Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship. When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan. Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio. Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust. He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore. Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help. But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people. But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio. After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone. They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship. It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up. In the end, the ship took forty-six people. Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.

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THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN By BRYCE WALTON Illustrated by BOB HAYES [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg! Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it. "'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe." Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce. "Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited. "Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished. "We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said. Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it. "Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?" "Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said. "I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?" "Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning." "I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain." Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard. They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one. With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest. In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face. He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late. Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them. "This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course." "For whom?" Bruce asked. "What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back." "When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor. Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!" "Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said. "Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward. "You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here." "I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it." "Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?" Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people." "I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?" Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed." Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes. "No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about." Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?" "There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...." He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place. A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt— Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?" "I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated. "What? When he shot what?" Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail. "All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here." "What kind of dreams?" Someone laughed. "Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all." Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room. "It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth." Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?" "Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?" Terrence nodded and glanced to either side. "We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—" "The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it." "Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there. "Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me." "Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid. "I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—" His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think." "What? Explain that remark." "That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did." "Is that all, Bruce?" "That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance." "That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago." Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape. "Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies." "Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—" "Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?" She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—" "All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?" "Yes. Execution." "No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth." "I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain." Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time." "What kind of service?" "Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain." "Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?" "We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in." "I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting." Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts. He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity. At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing. At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!" At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!" From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth." And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—" Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time. From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are." Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—" Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams. It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams. The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep. He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene. Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense. The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know. ' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... ' So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams. And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky. "If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable." Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos. But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious. "Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—" And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts." Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door. "Marsha," he said. "Bruce—" She hadn't said his name that way for a long time. "Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...." He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper. "Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...." Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?" He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her. "Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?" "Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down." He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks. "'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain, But down, my dear; And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley Will never seem fresh or clear For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water In the feathery green of the year....'" The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice. "Marsha, are you still there?" "What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the UNIVERSE !" Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back. Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down. He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives. He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water. The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind. He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams? The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette. He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was. He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four. There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up. There was no mountain. For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again. "Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!" "Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet. "Smoke?" she said. He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket. "It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?" "I guess it's about perfect." "It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know." "I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again." "We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?" "No." He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this? "' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '" She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?" "Maybe I don't." She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance." "Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...." "You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long." She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn. She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know. A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green. She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him. "I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?" "I'm very glad," he said. "The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians." She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see." They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking. "It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to." He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings. The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally. Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal. He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal. "You loved her?" "Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her." He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it. "'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'" He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back. "They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?" "Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that." They entered the city.

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Recruit for Andromeda by MILTON LESSER ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y. RECRUIT FOR ANDROMEDA Copyright 1959, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U.S.A. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] TOURNAMENT UNDER NIGHTMARE SKIES When Kit Temple was drafted for the Nowhere Journey, he figured that he'd left his home, his girl, and the Earth for good. For though those called were always promised "rotation," not a man had ever returned from that mysterious flight into the unknown. Kit's fellow-draftee Arkalion, the young man with the strange, old-man eyes, seemed to know more than he should. So when Kit twisted the tail of fate and followed Arkalion to the ends of space and time, he found the secret behind "Nowhere" and a personal challenge upon which the entire future of Earth depended. Contents CHAPTER I When the first strong sunlight of May covered the tree-arched avenues of Center City with green, the riots started. The people gathered in angry knots outside the city hall, met in the park and littered its walks with newspapers and magazines as they gobbled up editorial comment at a furious rate, slipped with dark of night through back alleys and planned things with furious futility. Center City's finest knew when to make themselves scarce: their uniforms stood for everything objectionable at this time and they might be subjected to clubs, stones, taunts, threats, leers—and knives. But Center City, like most communities in United North America, had survived the Riots before and would survive them again. On past performances, the damage could be estimated, too. Two-hundred fifty-seven plate glass windows would be broken, three-hundred twelve limbs fractured. Several thousand people would be treated for minor bruises and abrasions, Center City would receive half that many damage suits. The list had been drawn clearly and accurately; it hardly ever deviated. And Center City would meet its quota. With a demonstration of reluctance, of course. The healthy approved way to get over social trauma once every seven-hundred eighty days. "Shut it off, Kit. Kit, please." The telio blared in a cheaply feminine voice, "Oh, it's a long way to nowhere, forever. And your honey's not coming back, never, never, never...." A wailing trumpet represented flight. "They'll exploit anything, Kit." "It's just a song." "Turn it off, please." Christopher Temple turned off the telio, smiling. "They'll announce the names in ten minutes," he said, and felt the corners of his mouth draw taut. "Tell me again, Kit," Stephanie pleaded. "How old are you?" "You know I'm twenty-six." "Twenty-six. Yes, twenty-six, so if they don't call you this time, you'll be safe. Safe, I can hardly believe it." "Nine minutes," said Temple in the darkness. Stephanie had drawn the blinds earlier, had dialed for sound-proofing. The screaming in the streets came to them as not the faintest whisper. But the song which became briefly, masochistically popular every two years and two months had spoiled their feeling of seclusion. "Tell me again, Kit." "What." "You know what." He let her come to him, let her hug him fiercely and whimper against his chest. He remained passive although it hurt, occasionally stroking her hair. He could not assert himself for another—he looked at his strap chrono—for another eight minutes. He might regret it, if he did, for a lifetime. "Tell me, Kit." "I'll marry you, Steffy. In eight minutes, less than eight minutes, I'll go down and get the license. We'll marry as soon as it's legal." "This is the last time they have a chance for you. I mean, they won't change the law?" Temple shook his head. "They don't have to. They meet their quota this way." "I'm scared." "You and everyone else in North America, Steffy." She was trembling against him. "It's cold for June." "It's warm in here." He kissed her moist eyes, her nose, her lips. "Oh God, Kit. Five minutes." "Five minutes to freedom," he said jauntily. He did not feel that way at all. Apprehension clutched at his chest with tight, painful fingers, almost making it difficult for him to breathe. "Turn it on, Kit." He dialed the telio in time to see the announcer's insincere smile. Smile seventeen, Kit thought wryly. Patriotic sacrifice. "Every seven-hundred eighty days," said the announcer, "two-hundred of Center City's young men are selected to serve their country for an indeterminate period regulated rigidly by a rotation system." "Liar!" Stephanie cried. "No one ever comes back. It's been thirty years since the first group and not one of them...." "Shh," Temple raised a finger to his lips. "This is the thirteenth call since the inception of what is popularly referred to as the Nowhere Journey," said the announcer. "Obviously, the two hundred young men from Center City and the thousands from all over this hemisphere do not in reality embark on a Journey to Nowhere. That is quite meaningless." "Hooray for him," Temple laughed. "I wish he'd get on with it." "No, ladies and gentlemen, we use the word Nowhere merely because we are not aware of the ultimate destination. Security reasons make it impossible to...." "Yes, yes," said Stephanie impatiently. "Go on." "... therefore, the Nowhere Journey. With a maximum security lid on the whole project, we don't even know why our men are sent, or by what means. We know only that they go somewhere and not nowhere, bravely and not fearfully, for a purpose vital to the security of this nation and not to slake the thirst of a chessman of regiments and divisions. "If Center City's contribution helps keep our country strong, Center City is naturally obligated...." "No one ever said it isn't our duty," Stephanie argued, as if the announcer could indeed hear her. "We only wish we knew something about it—and we wish it weren't forever." "It isn't forever," Temple reminded her. "Not officially." "Officially, my foot. If they never return, they never return. If there's a rotation system on paper, but it's never used, that's not a rotation system at all. Kit, it's forever." "... to thank the following sponsors for relinquishing their time...." "No one would want to sponsor that ," Temple whispered cheerfully. "Kit," said Stephanie, "I—I suddenly have a hunch we have nothing to worry about. They missed you all along and they'll miss you this time, too. The last time, and then you'll be too old. That's funny, too old at twenty-six. But we'll be free, Kit. Free." "He's starting," Temple told her. A large drum filled the entire telio screen. It rotated slowly from bottom to top. In twenty seconds, the letter A appeared, followed by about a dozen names. Abercrombie, Harold. Abner, Eugene. Adams, Gerald. Sorrow in the Abercrombie household. Despair for the Abners. Black horror for Adams. The drum rotated. "They're up to F, Kit." Fabian, Gregory G.... Names circled the drum slowly, live viscous alphabet soup. Meaningless, unless you happened to know them. "Kit, I knew Thomas Mulvany." N, O, P.... "It's hot in here." "I thought you were cold." "I'm suffocating now." R, S.... "T!" Stephanie shrieked as the names began to float slowly up from the bottom of the drum. Tabor, Tebbets, Teddley.... Temple's mouth felt dry as a ball of cotton. Stephanie laughed nervously. Now—or never. Never? Now. Stephanie whimpered despairingly. TEMPLE, CHRISTOPHER. "Sorry I'm late, Mr. Jones." "Hardly, Mr. Smith. Hardly. Three minutes late." "I've come in response to your ad." "I know. You look old." "I am over twenty-six. Do you mind?" "Not if you don't, Mr. Smith. Let me look at you. Umm, you seem the right height, the right build." "I meet the specifications exactly." "Good, Mr. Smith. And your price." "No haggling," said Smith. "I have a price which must be met." "Your price, Mr. Smith?" "Ten million dollars." The man called Jones coughed nervously. "That's high." "Very. Take it or leave it." "In cash?" "Definitely. Small unmarked bills." "You'd need a moving van!" "Then I'll get one." "Ten million dollars," said Jones, "is quite a price. Admittedly, I haven't dealt in this sort of traffic before, but—" "But nothing. Were your name Jones, really and truly Jones, I might ask less." "Sir?" "You are Jones exactly as much as I am Smith." "Sir?" Jones gasped again. Smith coughed discreetly. "But I have one advantage. I know you. You don't know me, Mr. Arkalion." "Eh? Eh?" "Arkalion. The North American Carpet King. Right?" "How did you know?" the man whose name was not Jones but Arkalion asked the man whose name was not Smith but might as well have been. "When I saw your ad," said not-Smith, "I said to myself, 'now here must be a very rich, influential man.' It only remained for me to study a series of photographs readily obtainable—I have a fine memory for that, Mr. Arkalion—and here you are; here is Arkalion the Carpet King." "What will you do with the ten million dollars?" demanded Arkalion, not minding the loss nearly so much as the ultimate disposition of his fortune. "Why, what does anyone do with ten million dollars? Treasure it. Invest it. Spend it." "I mean, what will you do with it if you are going in place of my—" Arkalion bit his tongue. "Your son, were you saying, Mr. Arkalion? Alaric Arkalion the Third. Did you know that I was able to boil my list of men down to thirty when I studied their family ties?" "Brilliant, Mr. Smith. Alaric is so young—" "Aren't they all? Twenty-one to twenty-six. Who was it who once said something about the flower of our young manhood?" "Shakespeare?" said Mr. Arkalion realizing that most quotes of lasting importance came from the bard. "Sophocles," said Smith. "But no matter. I will take young Alaric's place for ten million dollars." Motives always troubled Mr. Arkalion, and thus he pursued what might have been a dangerous conversation. "You'll never get a chance to spend it on the Nowhere Journey." "Let me worry about that." "No one ever returns." "My worry, not yours." "It is forever—as if you dropped out of existence. Alaric is so young." "I have always gambled, Mr. Arkalion. If I do not return in five years, you are to put the money in a trust fund for certain designated individuals, said fund to be terminated the moment I return. If I come back within the five years, you are merely to give the money over to me. Is that clear?" "Yes." "I'll want it in writing, of course." "Of course. A plastic surgeon is due here in about ten minutes, Mr. Smith, and we can get on with.... But if I don't know your name, how can I put it in writing?" Smith smiled. "I changed my name to Smith for the occasion. Perfectly legal. My name is John X. Smith—now!" "That's where you're wrong," said Mr. Arkalion as the plastic surgeon entered. "Your name is Alaric Arkalion III— now ." The plastic surgeon skittered around Smith, examining him minutely with the casual expertness that comes with experience. "Have to shorten the cheek bones." "For ten million dollars," said Smith, "you can take the damned things out altogether and hang them on your wall." Sophia Androvna Petrovitch made her way downtown through the bustle of tired workers and the occasional sprinkling of Comrades. She crushed her ersatz cigarette underfoot at number 616 Stalin Avenue, paused for the space of five heartbeats at the door, went inside. "What do you want?" The man at the desk was myopic but bull-necked. Sophia showed her party card. "Oh, Comrade. Still, you are a woman." "You're terribly observant, Comrade," said Sophia coldly. "I am here to volunteer." "But a woman." "There is nothing in the law which says a woman cannot volunteer." "We don't make women volunteer." "I mean really volunteer, of her own free will." "Her—own—free will?" The bull-necked man removed his spectacles, scratched his balding head with the ear-pieces. "You mean volunteer without—" "Without coercion. I want to volunteer. I am here to volunteer. I want to sign on for the next Stalintrek." "Stalintrek, a woman?" "That is what I said." "We don't force women to volunteer." The man scratched some more. "Oh, really," said Sophia. "This is 1992, not mid-century, Comrade. Did not Stalin say, 'Woman was created to share the glorious destiny of Mother Russia with her mate?'" Sophia created the quote randomly. "Yes, if Stalin said—" "He did." "Still, I do not recall—" "What?" Sophia cried. "Stalin dead these thirty-nine years and you don't recall his speeches? What is your name, Comrade?" "Please, Comrade. Now that you remind me, I remember." "What is your name." "Here, I will give you the volunteer papers to sign. If you pass the exams, you will embark on the next Stalintrek, though why a beautiful young woman like you—" "Shut your mouth and hand me those papers." There, sitting behind that desk, was precisely why. Why should she, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch, wish to volunteer for the Stalintrek? Better to ask why a bird flies south in the winter, one day ahead of the first icy gale. Or why a lemming plunges recklessly into the sea with his multitudes of fellows, if, indeed, the venture were to turn out grimly. But there, behind that desk, was part of the reason. The Comrade. The bright sharp Comrade, with his depth of reasoning, his fountain of gushing emotions, his worldliness. Pfooey! It was as if she had been in a cocoon all her life, stifled, starved, the cottony inner lining choking her whenever she opened her mouth, the leathery outer covering restricting her when she tried to move. No one had ever returned from the Stalintrek. She then had to assume no one would. Including Sophia Androvna Petrovitch. But then, there was nothing she would miss, nothing to which she particularly wanted to return. Not the stark, foul streets of Stalingrad, not the workers with their vapid faces or the Comrades with their cautious, sweating, trembling, fearful non-decisions, not the higher echelon of Comrades, more frightened but showing it less, who would love the beauty of her breasts and loins but not herself for you never love anything but the Stalinimage and Mother Russia herself, not those terrified martinet-marionettes who would love the parts of her if she permitted but not her or any other person for that matter. Wrong with the Stalintrek was its name alone, a name one associated with everything else in Russia for an obvious, post-Stalin reason. But everything else about the Stalintrek shrieked mystery and adventure. Where did you go? How did you get there? What did you do? Why? A million questions which had kept her awake at night and, if she thought about them hard enough, satisfied her deep longing for something different. And then one day when stolid Mrs. Ivanovna-Rasnikov had said, "It is a joke, a terrible, terrible joke they are taking my husband Fyodor on the Stalintrek when he lacks sufficient imagination to go from here to Leningrad or even Tula. Can you picture Fyodor on the Stalintrek? Better they should have taken me. Better they should have taken his wife." That day Sophia could hardly contain herself. As a party member she had access to the law and she read it three times from start to finish (in her dingy flat by the light of a smoking, foul-smelling, soft-wax candle) but could find nothing barring women from the Stalintrek. Had Fyodor Rasnikov volunteered? Naturally. Everyone volunteered, although when your name was called you had no choice. There had been no draft in Russia since the days of the Second War of the People's Liberation. Volunteer? What, precisely, did the word mean? She, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch would volunteer, without being told. Thus it was she found herself at 616 Stalin Avenue, and thus the balding, myopic, bull-necked Comrade thrust the papers across his desk at her. She signed her name with such vehemence and ferocity that she almost tore through the paper. CHAPTER II Three-score men sit in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Some drink beer, some squat in moody silence, some talk in an animated fashion about nothing very urgent. At the one small door, two guards pace back and forth slowly, creating a gentle swaying of smoke-patterns in the hazy room. The guards, in simple military uniform, carry small, deadly looking weapons. FIRST MAN: Fight City Hall? Are you kidding? They took you, bud. Don't try to fight it, I know. I know. SECOND MAN: I'm telling you, there was a mistake in the records. I'm over twenty-six. Two weeks and two days. Already I wrote to my Congressman. Hell, that's why I voted for him, he better go to bat for me. THIRD MAN: You think that's something? I wouldn't be here only those doctors are crazy. I mean, crazy. Me, with a cyst big as a golf ball on the base of my spine. FIRST MAN: You too. Don't try to fight it. FOURTH MAN: (Newly named Alaric Arkalion III) I look forward to this as a stimulating adventure. Does the fact that they select men for the Nowhere Journey once every seven hundred and eighty days strike anyone as significant? SECOND MAN: I got my own problems. ALARIC ARKALION: This is not a thalamic problem, young man. Not thalamic at all. THIRD MAN: Young man? Who are you kidding? ALARIC ARKALION: (Who realizes, thanks to the plastic surgeon, he is the youngest looking of all, with red cheeks and peachfuzz whiskers) It is a problem of the intellect. Why seven hundred and eighty days? FIRST MAN: I read the magazine, too, chief. You think we're all going to the planet Mars. How original. ALARIC ARKALION: As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I think. SECOND MAN: Mars? FIRST MAN: (Laughing) It's a long way from Mars to City Hall, doc. SECOND MAN: You mean, through space to Mars? ALARIC ARKALION: Exactly, exactly. Quite a coincidence, otherwise. FIRST MAN: You're telling me. ALARIC ARKALION: (Coldly) Would you care to explain it? FIRST MAN: Why, sure. You see, Mars is—uh, I don't want to steal your thunder, chief. Go ahead. ALARIC ARKALION: Once every seven hundred and eighty days Mars and the Earth find themselves in the same orbital position with respect to the sun. In other words, Mars and Earth are closest then. Were there such a thing as space travel, new, costly, not thoroughly tested, they would want to make each journey as brief as possible. Hence the seven hundred and eighty days. FIRST MAN: Not bad, chief. You got most of it. THIRD MAN: No one ever said anything about space travel. FIRST MAN: You think we'd broadcast it or something, stupid? It's part of a big, important scientific experiment, only we're the hamsters. ALARIC ARKALION: Ridiculous. You're forgetting all about the Cold War. FIRST MAN: He thinks we're fighting a war with the Martians. (Laughs) Orson Wells stuff, huh? ALARIC ARKALION: With the Russians. The Russians. We developed A bombs. They developed A bombs. We came up with the H bomb. So did they. We placed a station up in space, a fifth of the way to the moon. So did they. Then—nothing more about scientific developments. For over twenty years. I ask you, doesn't it seem peculiar? FIRST MAN: Peculiar, he says. ALARIC ARKALION: Peculiar. SECOND MAN: I wish my Congressman.... FIRST MAN: You and your Congressman. The way you talk, it was your vote got him in office. SECOND MAN: If only I could get out and talk to him. ALARIC ARKALION: No one is permitted to leave. FIRST MAN: Punishable by a prison term, the law says. SECOND MAN: Oh yeah? Prison, shmision. Or else go on the Nowhere Journey. Well, I don't see the difference. FIRST MAN: So, go ahead. Try to escape. SECOND MAN: (Looking at the guards) They got them all over. All over. I think our mail is censored. ALARIC ARKALION: It is. SECOND MAN: They better watch out. I'm losing my temper. I get violent when I lose my temper. FIRST MAN: See? See how the guards are trembling. SECOND MAN: Very funny. Maybe you didn't have a good job or something? Maybe you don't care. I care. I had a job with a future. Didn't pay much, but a real blue chip future. So they send me to Nowhere. FIRST MAN: You're not there yet. SECOND MAN: Yeah, but I'm going. THIRD MAN: If only they let you know when. My back is killing me. I'm waiting to pull a sick act. Just waiting, that's all. FIRST MAN: Go ahead and wait, a lot of good it will do you. THIRD MAN: You mind your own business. FIRST MAN: I am, doc. You brought the whole thing up. SECOND MAN: He's looking for trouble. THIRD MAN: He'll get it. ALARIC ARKALION: We're going to be together a long time. A long time. Why don't you all relax? SECOND MAN: You mind your own business. FIRST MAN: Nuts, aren't they. They're nuts. A sick act, yet. SECOND MAN: Look how it doesn't bother him. A failure, he was. I can just see it. What does he care if he goes away forever and doesn't come back? One bread line is as good as another. FIRST MAN: Ha-ha. SECOND MAN: Yeah, well I mean it. Forever. We're going away, someplace—forever. We're not coming back, ever. No one comes back. It's for good, for keeps. FIRST MAN: Tell it to your congressman. Or maybe you want to pull a sick act, too? THIRD MAN: (Hits First Man, who, surprised, crashes back against a table and falls down) It isn't an act, damn you! GUARD: All right, break it up. Come on, break it up.... ALARIC ARKALION: (To himself) I wish I saw that ten million dollars already— if I ever get to see it. They drove for hours through the fresh country air, feeling the wind against their faces, listening to the roar their ground-jet made, all alone on the rimrock highway. "Where are we going, Kit?" "Search me. Just driving." "I'm glad they let you come out this once. I don't know what they would have done to me if they didn't. I had to see you this once. I—" Temple smiled. He had absented himself without leave. It had been difficult enough and he might yet be in a lot of hot water, but it would be senseless to worry Stephanie. "It's just for a few hours," he said. "Hours. When we want a whole lifetime. Kit. Oh, Kit—why don't we run away? Just the two of us, someplace where they'll never find you. I could be packed and ready and—" "Don't talk like that. We can't." "You want to go where they're sending you. You want to go." "For God's sake, how can you talk like that? I don't want to go anyplace, except with you. But we can't run away, Steffy. I've got to face it, whatever it is." "No you don't. It's noble to be patriotic, sure. It always was. But this is different, Kit. They don't ask for part of your life. Not for two years, or three, or a gamble because maybe you won't ever come back. They ask for all of you, for the rest of your life, forever, and they don't even tell you why. Kit, don't go! We'll hide someplace and get married and—" "And nothing." Temple stopped the ground-jet, climbed out, opened the door for Stephanie. "Don't you see? There's no place to hide. Wherever you go, they'd look. You wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life running, Steffy. Not with me or anyone else." "I would. I would!" "Know what would happen after a few years? We'd hate each other. You'd look at me and say 'I wouldn't be hiding like this, except for you. I'm young and—'" "Kit, that's cruel! I would not." "Yes, you would. Steffy, I—" A lump rose in his throat. He'd tell her goodbye, permanently. He had to do it that way, did not want her to wait endlessly and hopelessly for a return that would not materialize. "I didn't get permission to leave, Steffy." He hadn't meant to tell her that, but suddenly it seemed an easy way to break into goodbye. "What do you mean? No—you didn't...." "I had to see you. What can they do, send me for longer than forever?" "Then you do want to run away with me!" "Steffy, no. When I leave you tonight, Steffy, it's for good. That's it. The last of Kit Temple. Stop thinking about me. I don't exist. I—never was." It sounded ridiculous, even to him. "Kit, I love you. I love you. How can I forget you?" "It's happened before. It will happen again." That hurt, too. He was talking about a couple of statistics, not about himself and Stephanie. "We're different, Kit. I'll love you forever. And—Kit ... I know you'll come back to me. I'll wait, Kit. We're different. You'll come back." "How many people do you think said that before?" "You don't want to come back, even if you could. You're not thinking of us at all. You're thinking of your brother." "You know that isn't true. Sometimes I wonder about Jase, sure. But if I thought there was a chance to return—I'm a selfish cuss, Steffy. If I thought there was a chance, you know I'd want you all for myself. I'd brand you, and that's the truth." "You do love me!" "I loved you, Steffy. Kit Temple loved you." "Loved?" "Loved. Past tense. When I leave tonight, it's as if I don't exist anymore. As if I never existed. It's got to be that way, Steffy. In thirty years, no one ever returned." "Including your brother, Jase. So now you want to find him. What do I count for? What...." "This going wasn't my idea. I wanted to stay with you. I wanted to marry you. I can't now. None of it. Forget me, Steffy. Forget you ever knew me. Jase said that to our folks before he was taken." Almost five years before Jason Temple had been selected for the Nowhere Journey. He'd been young, though older than his brother Kit. Young, unattached, almost cheerful he was. Naturally, they never saw him again. "Hold me, Kit. I'm sorry ... carrying on like this." They had walked some distance from the ground-jet, through scrub oak and bramble bushes. They found a clearing, fragrant-scented, soft-floored still from last autumn, melodic with the chirping of nameless birds. They sat, not talking. Stephanie wore a gay summer dress, full-skirted, cut deep beneath the throat. She swayed toward him from the waist, nestled her head on his shoulder. He could smell the soft, sweet fragrance of her hair, of the skin at the nape of her neck. "If you want to say goodbye ..." she said. "Stop it," he told her. "If you want to say goodbye...." Her head rolled against his chest. She turned, cradled herself in his arms, smiled up at him, squirmed some more and had her head pillowed on his lap. She smiled tremulously, misty-eyed. Her lips parted. He bent and kissed her, knowing it was all wrong. This was not goodbye, not the way he wanted it. Quickly, definitely, for once and all. With a tear, perhaps, a lot of tears. But permanent goodbye. This was all wrong. The whole idea was to be business-like, objective. It had to be done that way, or no way at all. Briefly, he regretted leaving the encampment. This wasn't goodbye the way he wanted it. The way it had to be. This was auf weidersen . And then he forgot everything but Stephanie.... "I am Alaric Arkalion III," said the extremely young-looking man with the old, wise eyes. How incongruous, Temple thought. The eyes look almost middle-aged. The rest of him—a boy. "Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of each other," Arkalion went on. The voice was that of an older man, too, belying the youthful complexion, the almost childish features, the soft fuzz of a beard. "I'm Kit Temple," said Temple, extending his hand. "Arkalion, a strange name. I know it from somewhere.... Say! Aren't you—don't you have something to do with carpets or something?" "Here and now, no. I am a number. A-92-6417. But my father is—perhaps I had better say was—my father is Alaric Arkalion II. Yes, that is right, the carpet king." "I'll be darned," said Temple. "Why?" "Well," Temple laughed. "I never met a billionaire before." "Here I am not a billionaire, nor will I ever be one again. A-92-6417, a number. On his way to Mars with a bunch of other numbers." "Mars? You sound sure of yourself." "Reasonably. Ah, it is a pleasure to talk with a gentleman. I am reasonably certain it will be Mars." Temple nodded in agreement. "That's what the Sunday supplements say, all right." "And doubtless you have observed no one denies it." "But what on Earth do we want on Mars?" "That in itself is a contradiction," laughed Arkalion. "We'll find out, though, Temple." They had reached the head of the line, found themselves entering a huge, double-decker jet-transport. They found two seats together, followed the instructions printed at the head of the aisle by strapping themselves in and not smoking. Talking all around them was subdued. "Contrariness has given way to fear," Arkalion observed. "You should have seen them the last few days, waiting around the induction center, a two-ton chip on each shoulder. Say, where were you?" "I—what do you mean?" "I didn't see you until last evening. Suddenly, you were here." "Did anyone else miss me?" "But I remember you the first day." "Did anyone else miss me? Any of the officials?" "No. Not that I know of." "Then I was here," Temple said, very seriously. Arkalion smiled. "By George, of course. Then you were here. Temple, we'll get along fine." Temple said that was swell. "Anyway, we'd better. Forever is a long time." Three minutes later, the jet took off and soared on eager wings toward the setting sun.