SILKIES IN SPACE

1

NAT CEMP, walking along the street, passed the man--and stopped.

Something about the other triggered a signal in that portion of his nervous system which, even in his human state, retained a portion of his Silkie ability. He couldn't remember, hard as he tried, ever having felt that particular signal before.

Cemp turned in the street and looked back. The stranger had paused at the near corner. Then, as the light became green, he walked briskly toward the far sidewalk. He was about Cemp's height of slightly over six feet and seemed about the same build--about a hundred and ninety pounds.

His hair was dark brown, like Cemp's, and he wore a dark gray suit, as did Cemp. Now that they were several hundred feet apart, the initial impression he had had of somebody familiar was not so clear.

Yet after only a slight hesitation, Cemp rapidly walked after the man, presently came up to him, and said courteously, "May I speak to you?"

The man stopped. At close range, the resemblance between them was truly remarkable, suggesting consanguinity. Blue-gray eyes, straight nose, firm mouth, strong neck, shape of ears, and the very way they held themselves were similar.

Cemp said, "I wonder if you are aware that you and I are practically twins."

The man's face twisted slightly. His lips curled into a faint sneer, and his eyes gazed scornfully at Cemp. He said in an exact replica of Cemp's baritone voice, "It was my intent that you notice. If you hadn't this first time, then I would have approached you again. My name is U-Brem."

Cemp was silent, startled. He was surprised at the hostility in the stranger's tone and manner. Contempt, he analyzed wonderingly.

Had the man been merely a human being who had somehow recognized a Silkie in human form, Cemp would have considered it one of those occasional incidents. Known Silkies were sometimes sought out by humans and insulted. Usually the human who committed such a foolish act could be evaded or good-naturedly parried or won over. But once in a while a Silkie had to fight. However, the man's resemblance to Cemp indicated that this encounter was different.

As he had these thoughts, the stranger's cynical gray-blue eyes were gazing into Cemp's. The man's lips parted in a derisive smile, showing even white teeth. "At approximately this moment," he said, "every Silkie in the solar system is receiving a communication from his alter ego."

He paused; again the insolent smile. "I can see that has alerted you, and you're bracing yourself ..."

It was true. Cemp had abruptly decided that whether the other's statement was true or not, he could not let him get away.

The man continued, "... bracing yourself to try to seize me. It can't be done, for I match you in every way."

"You're a Silkie?" Cemp asked.

"I'm a Silkie."

By all the logic of Silkie history, that had to be a false claim. And yet there was the unmistakable, sensational resemblance to himself.

But Cemp did not change his mind. Even if this was a Silkie, Cemp had a superiority over all other Silkies. In his struggle with the Kibmadine the year before, he had learned things about body control that were known to no other Silkie, since it had been decided by the Silkie Authority that he must not communicate to other Silkies the newly gained abilities. And he hadn't.

That extra knowledge would now be to his advantage--if the other was indeed a Silkie.

"Ready for the message?" asked the man insolently.

Cemp, who was ready for the battle of his life, nodded curtly.

"It's an ultimatum."

"I'm waiting," said Cemp.

"You are to cease and desist from your association with human beings. You are commanded to return to the nation of Silkies. You have a week to make up your mind. After that date you will be considered a traitor and will be treated as traitors have always been treated, without mercy."

Since there was no "nation" of Silkies and never had been, Cemp, after considering the unexpected "ultimatum" for a moment, made his attack.

He still didn't quite believe that his "twin" was a Silkie. So he launched a minimum electric charge on one of the magnetic bands that he could use as a human--enough to render unconsciousness but not damage.

To his dismay, a Silkie magnetic screen as powerful as anything he could muster warded off the energy blow. So the man was a Silkie.

The stranger stared at him, teeth showing, eyes glinting with sudden rage. "I'll remember this!" he snarled. "You'd have hurt me if I hadn't had a defense."

Cemp hesitated, questioning his own purpose. It didn't have to be capture. "Look," he urged, "why don't you come with me to the Silkie Authority? If there is a Silkie nation, normal communication is the best way of proving it."

The strange Silkie began to back away. "I've done my duty," he muttered. "I'm not accustomed to fighting. You tried to kill me."

He seemed to be in a state of shock. His eyes had changed again, and they looked dazed now. All the man's initial cocksureness was gone as he continued backing away.

Cemp followed, uncertain. He was himself a highly trained fighter; it was hard to grasp that here might be a Silkie who was actually not versed in battle.

He soothed, "We don't have to fight. But you can't expect to deliver an ultimatum and then go off into nowhere, as if you've done your part. You say your name is U-Brem. Where do you come from?"

He was aware, as he spoke, that people had stopped in the street and were watching the strange drama of two men, one retreating, the other pursuing, a slow step at a time.

"First, if there's a Silkie nation, where has it--where have you--been biding all these years?" Cemp persisted.

"Damn you, stop badgering me. You've got your ultimatum. You've got a week to think about it. Now leave me alone!"

The alter ego had clearly not considered what he would do after delivering his message. His unpreparedness made the whole incident even more fantastic. But he was showing anger again, recovering his nerve.

An electric discharge, in the jagged form of lightning, rode a magnetic beam of U-Brem's creation and struck at Cemp, crackling against the magnetic screen he kept ready to be triggered into instant existence.

The lightning bolt bounced away from Cemp, caromed off a building, flashed across the sidewalk past several startled people, and grounded itself on the metal grill of a street drain.

"Two can play that game," said U-Brem in a savage tone.

Cemp made no reply. The other's electric beam had been maximum for a Silkie in human form--death-level potency. Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed. The street was clearing. People were running away, seeking shelter.

The time had come to end this madness, or someone might be killed. Cemp acted on his evaluation that for some reason that was not clear, this Silkie was not properly trained and was therefore vulnerable to a nonlethal attack by a technique involving a simple version of levels of logic.

He wouldn't even have to use the secret ability he had learned from the Kibmadine the year before.

The moment he made up his mind, he did a subtle energy thing. He modified a specific set of low-energy force lines passing through his brain and going in the direction of U-Brem.

Instantly, there was manifested a strange logic implicit in the very structure and makeup of life. The logic of levels! The science that had been derived by human scientific methods from the great Silkie ability for changing form.

Each life cell had its own rigidity. Each gestalt of cells did a specific action, could do no other. Once stimulated, the "thought" in that particular nerve bundle went through its exact cycle, and if there was an accompanying motion or emotion, that also manifested itself precisely and exactly and without qualification.

Even more meaningful, more important--a number of cell colonies could be joined together to form a new gestalt, and groups of such clusters had their special action. One such colony gestalt was the sleep center in human beings.

The method Cemp used wouldn't work on a Silkie in his class-C form. Even a B Silkie could fight off sleep. But this Silkie in human form began to stagger. His eyes were suddenly heavy lidded, and the uncontrolled appearance of his body showed that he was asleep on his feet.

As the man fell, Cemp stepped forward and caught his body, preventing an injurious crash to the concrete sidewalk. Simultaneously, he did a second, subtle, thing. On another force line, he put a message that manipulated the unconsciousness gestalt in the other's brain. It was an attempt at complete control. Sleep cut off U-Brem's perception of his environment. Cemp's manipulation of his unconsciousness mechanism eliminated those messages from the brain's stored memory which would normally stimulate to wakefulness someone who was not really sleepy.

Cemp was congratulating himself on his surprisingly easy capture--when the body he held stiffened. Cemp, sensing an outside force, drew back. To his complete astonishment, the unconscious man rose straight up into the sky.

In his human form, Cemp was not able to determine the nature of the energy that could accomplish such an improbable feat. He should he realized, transform to Silkie. He found himself hesitating. There was a rule against changing in full view of human beings. Abruptly, he recognized that this situation was unique, a never-before-encountered emergency. He transformed to Silkie and cut off gravity.

The ten-foot body, shaped a little like a projectile, rose from the ground at missile speed. Most of his clothes, completely torn away, fell to the ground. A few tattered remnants remained but were swept away by the gale winds created by his passage.

Unfortunately, all of five seconds had gone by while he made the transformation, and since several seconds had already passed before he acted, he found himself pursuing a speck that was continuing to go straight up.

What amazed him anew was that even with his Silkie perception, he could detect no energy from it, below it, or around it. Yet its speed was as great as anything he could manage. Accordingly, after only moments, he realized that his pursuit was not swift enough to overtake the man and that the body of U-Brem would reach an atmosphere height too rarefied for human survival unless he acted promptly. He therefore mercifully removed the pressure from the sleep and unconsciousness center of the other's body.

Moments later, he was disappointed, but not surprised, he sensed from the other a shift to Silkie form; proof that he had awakened and could now be responsible for himself.

U-Brem continued straight up, as a full-grown Silkie now, and it was presently obvious that he intended to risk going through the Van Allen belt. Cemp had no such foolhardy purpose.

As the two of them approached the outer limits of the atmosphere, Cemp put a thought on a beam to a manned Telstar unit in orbit around Earth. The thought contained simply the data about what had happened.

The message sent, he turned back. Greatly disturbed by his experience--and being without clothes for human wear--he flew straight to the Silkie Authority.

2

Cemp, descending from the sky down to the vast building complex that comprised the central administration for dealing with Silkies, saw that other Silkies were also coming in. He presumed, grimly, that they were there for the same reason as he was.

As the realization came, he scanned the heavens behind him with his Silkie senses and perceived that scores more of black spots were out there, hurtling closer. Divining imminent confusion, he slowed and stopped. Then, from his position in the sky, he telepathed Charley Baxter, proposing a special plan to handle the emergency.

Baxter was in a distracted state, but presently his return thought came. "Nat, yours is just about the best idea we've had. And you're right. This could be dangerous."

There was a pause. Baxter must have got his message through to other of the Special People, for Cemp began to record a general Silkie warning. "To all Silkies: It would be unwise for too many of you to concentrate at one time in one place. So divide into ten groups on the secret-number system, plan G. Group One only, approach and land. All others disperse until called."

In the sky near Cemp, Silkies began to mill around. Cemp, who, by the designated number system, was in group three, veered off, climbed to the upper atmosphere, and darted a thousand miles over, to his home in Florida.

En route, he talked mentally to his wife, Joanne. And so by the time he walked naked into the house, she had clothes laid out for him and knew as much as he about what had happened.

As Cemp dressed, he saw that she was in a womanly state of alarm, more concerned than he. She accepted that there was a Silkie nation and that this meant there would also be Silkie women.

"Admit it!" she said tearfully. "That thought has already crossed your mind, hasn't it?"

"I'm a logical person," Cemp defended. "So I've had fleeting thoughts about all possibilities. But being sensible, I feel that a lot of things have to be explained before I can reject what we know of Silkie history. And so until we have proof of something different, I shall go on believing that Silkies are the result of biological experiments with DNA and DNP and that old Sawyer did it there on Echo Island."

"What's going to become of our marriage?" Joanne said in an anguished voice.

"Nothing will change."

She sobbed. "I'm going to seem to you like a native woman of three hundred years ago who is married to a white man on a South Sea Island--and then white women begin arriving on the island."

The wildness of her fantasying astounded Cemp. "It's not the same," he said. "I promise complete loyalty and devotion for the rest of our lives."

"Nobody can promise anything in personal relations," she said. But his words seemed to reassure her after a moment. She dried her eyes and came over to him and allowed herself to be kissed.

It was an hour before a phone call came from Charley Baxter. The man was apologetic for the delay but explained that it was the result of a conference on Cemp's future actions.

"It was a discussion just about you in all this," Baxter said.

Cemp waited.

The final decision was to continue to not let Cemp intermingle with, other Silkies--"for reasons that you know," Baxter said significantly.

Cemp surmised that the reference was to the secret knowledge he had gained from the Kibmadine Di-isarinn and that this meant they would continue to send him on special missions that kept him away from other Silkies.

Baxter now produced the information that only four hundred Silkies had been approached by alter egos. "The number actually reported in," he said, "is three hundred and ninety-six."

Cemp was vaguely relieved, vaguely contemptuous. U-Brem's claim that all Silkies were targets was now proved to be propaganda. He had already shown himself to be an inept Silkie. The lie added one more degrading touch.

"Some of them were pretty poor duplicates," said Baxter. "Apparently, mimicking another body is not a great skill with them."

However, he admitted, even four hundred was more than enough to establish the existence of a hitherto unknown group of Silkies.

"Even if they are untrained," he said, "we've absolutely got to find out who they are and where they come from."

"Is there no clue?" Cemp asked.

No more than he already knew.

"They all got away?" Cemp said, astounded. "No one did any better than I did?"

"On the average, not as well," said Baxter.

It seemed that most Silkies had made no effort to hold the strange Silkies who confronted them; they had simply reported in and asked for instructions.

"Can't blame them," said Baxter.

He continued, "But I might as well tell you that your fight and your reasons for fighting make you one of the two dozen Silkies we feel we can depend on in this matter. So here are your instructions ..."

He talked for several minutes and concluded, "Take Joanne with you, but go at once!"

The sign said, ALL THE MUSIC IN THIS BUILDING IS SILKIE MUSIC.

Cemp, who had never listened for long to any other kind, saw the faint distaste come into his wife's face. She caught his look and evidently his thought, for she said, "All right, so it sounds dead level to me, as if it's all the same note--well, anyway, the same few notes, close together, repeated in various sickening combinations."

She stopped, shook-her beautiful blonde head, and said, "I guess I'm tense and afraid and need something wild and clashy."

To Cemp, who could hear harmonies in the music that were beyond the reach of ordinary human ears, her outburst was but a part of the severe emotional reactions to things that Silkies married to human women had to become accustomed to. The wives of Silkies had a hard time making their peace with the realities of the relationship.

As Joanne had put it more than once, "There you are with this physically perfect, beautiful male. But all the time you're thinking, "This is not really a man. It's a monster that can change in a flash into either a fishlike being or a creature of space. But of course, I wouldn't part with him for anything."

The music sign was soon behind them, and they walked on into the interior of the museum. Their destination was the original laboratory, in which the first Silkie was supposed to have been produced. The lab occupied the center of the building; it had been moved there from the West Indies a hundred and ten years before, according to a date on a wall plaque at the entrance.

It had seemed to Baxter that a sharper study should be made of the artifacts of Silkie history. The entire structure of that history was now being questioned for the very first time.

This task, of reevaluating the past data, had been assigned to Cemp and Joanne.

The lab was brightly lighted. It had only one visitor; a rather plain young woman with jet-black hair but no makeup, wearing ill-fitting clothes, was standing at one of the tables beside the far doorway.

As Cemp came in, a thought not his own touched his mind. He started to turn to Joanne, taking it for granted that she had communicated with him on that level. He took it for granted, that is, for several seconds.

Belatedly, realization came that the thought had arrived on a magnetic carrier wave--Silkie level.

Cemp swung around and stared at the black-haired woman. She smiled at him, somewhat tensely, he noted, and then her thought came, unmistakably: "Please don't give me away. I was stationed here to convince any doubting Silkie."

She didn't have to explain what she meant. The thunder of it was pouring through Cemp's mind.

According to his knowledge, there had never been any female Silkies. All Silkies on Earth were males, married to women of the Special People--like Joanne.

But this black-haired, farm-woman type was a female Silkie! That was what she was letting him know by her presence. In effect, by being here, she was saying, "Don't bother to search dusty old files. I'm living proof that Silkies were not produced in somebody's laboratory two hundred and thirty years ago."

Suddenly Cemp was confused. He was aware that Joanne had come up beside him, that she must have caught his thought, that she was herself dismayed. The one glimpse he had of her face showed that she had become very pale.

"Nat!" her voice came sharply. "You've got to capture her!"

Cemp started forward, but it was a half-hearted movement. Yet in spite of the uncertainty in his actions, he was already having logical thoughts.

Since only hours had gone by since the moment he first saw U-Brem, she must have been stationed here in advance. She would therefore have had no contact with the others. And so she wouldn't know that to a trained Silkie like himself, she was as vulnerable as an unarmed civilian opposed by a soldier.

The black-haired woman must have suddenly had some doubt of her own. Abruptly she stepped through the door near which she had been-standing and closed it after her.

"Nat!" Joanne's voice, high-pitched, sounded mere inches behind him. "You can't let her get away!"

Cemp, who had emerged from his brief stasis, projected a thought after the female Silkie. "I'm not going to fight you, but I'm going to stay close to you until I have all the information we want."

"Too late!" A magnetic carrier wave, human-Silkie level, brought her thought. "You're already too late."

Cemp didn't think so. He arrived at the door through which she had disappeared, was slightly disconcerted to find that it was locked, smashed it with a single jagged lightning thrust of electrical force, stepped through its smoking remains--and saw the woman in the act of entering a gap in the wall made by a sliding door.

She was not more than three dozen feet away, and she had half-turned to look back in his direction. What she saw was evidently a surprise, for a startled look came into her face.

Hastily, her hand came up to something inside the aperture, and the door slid shut. As it closed, Cemp, who was running toward it, had a glimpse of a gleaming corridor beyond. The existence of such a secret passageway had too many implications for Cemp to consider immediately.

He was at the wall, fumbling for the hidden door. When he could not find it after several long moments, he stepped back and burned it down with the two energy flows from his brain, which, when they came together outside his body, created an intense electrical arc. It was the only energy weapon available to him as a human being, but it was enough.

A minute later, he stepped through the smoking opening into a narrow corridor.

3

The corridor in which Cemp found himself was made of concrete and slanted gently downward. It was dimly lighted and straight, and he could see the young woman in the near distance ahead--about two hundred feet away.

She was running, but as a woman wearing a dress runs--not very fast. Cemp broke into his own high-speed lope and in a minute had cut the distance between them in half. Abruptly, the concrete ended. Ahead was a dirt cave, still lighted, but the lights were set farther apart.

As she reached this point, the young woman sent him a message on a magnetic force line. "If you don't stop chasing me, I'll have to use the (something not clear to Cemp) power."

Cemp remembered the energy that had lifted U-Brem into the sky. He took the threat seriously and instantly modified a magnetic wave to render her unconscious.

It was not so cruel an act as it would have been earlier. Now she fell like a stone--which was the unfortunate characteristic of the unconsciousness gestalt--but she fell on dirt and not on cement. The motion of her body was such that she pitched forward on her knees, then slid down on her right shoulder. It didn't look too severe for her--so it seemed to Cemp as he came closer to where she was lying.

He had slowed to a walk. Now, still wary, he approached the prostrate body, determined not to let any special "power" remove her from him. He felt only slightly guilty at the violent method he had used. His reasoning had permitted no less control over her. The "sleep" shut-off on U-Brem had not prevented that individual from turning on the force field--so Cemp considered it to be--that had saved him. Quite simply, he couldn't let her get away.

Because it was an untried situation, he acted at once. At this moment, he had her; there were too many unknowns for him to risk any delay. He knelt beside her. Since she was unconscious and not asleep, her sensory system was open to exterior stimulation. But for her to answer, she would have to be switched to sleep, so that the shut-off interior perception could flow.

So he sat there, alternately manipulating her unconsciousness center, when he wanted to ask a question, and her sleep center, for her reply. It was like ancient ham radio with each party saying "over" when his message was completed.

And of course, in addition, he had to make sure that she did reply to his queries. So he asked one question after another, and with each question he modified a magnetic wave with a message to the brain-cell gestalt that responded to hypnotic drugs. The result was a steady mental conversation.

"What is your name?"

"B-Roth."

"Where do you come from?"

"From home."

"Where is home?"

"In the sky." A mental image came of a small stone body in space; Cemp's impression was of a meteorite less than twenty miles in diameter. "About to go around the sun, inside the first planet's orbit."

So she had come to Earth in advance. So they were all far from "home" and had apparently had no preliminary knowledge that they were outskilled by Earth Silkies. As a result, he was now obtaining this decisive information.

"What is its orbit?" Cemp asked.

"It goes as far out as the eighth planet."

Neptune! What a tremendous distance--nearly thirty astronomical units.

Cemp asked quickly, "What is its mean speed?"

Her answer was in terms of Mercury's year. Converted to Earth time, it came to a hundred and ten years per orbit.

Cemp whistled softly. An immediate association had leaped into his mind. The first Silkie baby had been born to Marie Ederle slightly more than two hundred and twenty years before, according to the official history. The time involved was approximately twice as long as the orbital period of the little Silkie planetoid.

Cemp ended that train of speculation abruptly and demanded from B-Roth exactly how she would again find the planetoid, which surely must be one of thousands of similar bodies.

The answer was one that only a Silkie could operate from. She had in her brain a set of relationships and signal-recognition images that identified for her the location of the Silkie home.

Cemp made an exact mental copy of these images. He was about to begin questioning her for details on other matters--when an inertia phenomenon effected his body.

He was flung backward. ... It was as if he were in a vehicle, his back to the forward motion, and the vehicle stopped suddenly, but he went on.

Because he always had protection against sudden falls, he had been moved less than eight feet before he triggered his magnetic field, his only screening mechanism as a human.

The field he set up could not stop the pull of gravity directly, but it derived from the Earth's magnetic force and gained its power from the force lines that passed through this exact space.

As Cemp modulated the lines now, they attached themselves to flexible metal bands that were woven into his clothes, and they held him. He hung there a few feet above the floor. From this vantage point he was able to examine his situation.

At once, the phenomenon was shown as completely fantastic. He detected in the heart of the gravity field a tiny molecule complex. What was fantastic about it was this: Gravity was an invariable, solely dependent on mass and square of distance. Cemp had already calculated the gravity pull on him to be the equivalent of three times that of Earth at sea level. And so, by all the laws of physics, that incredibly small particle must have an equivalent mass to three Earths!

Impossible, of course.

It was by no means a complex of one of the large molecules, as far as Cemp could determine, and it was not radioactive.

He was about to abandon his study of it and to turn his attention to his own situation, when he noticed that the gravity field had an even more improbable quality. Its pull was limited to organic matter. It had no effect on the surrounding dirt walls, and in fact--his mind poised in a final amazement--the woman's body was not influenced by it.

The gravity was limited to one particular organic configuration--himself! One body, one human being only--Nat Cemp--was the sole object toward which it was oriented.

He found himself remembering how he had been untouched by the field that had lifted U-Brem. He had sensed the presence of a field but only by the way the magnetic lines that passed through his head were affected by it. Even in his Silkie form, as he pursued the hurtling body of his alter ego, that, and merely that, had been true.

This was for him a personal gravitational field, a small group of molecules that "knew" him.

As these flashing awarenesses came to him, Cemp turned his head and gazed back at the young woman. He was not surprised at what he saw. His attention had been forcibly removed from her, so the pressure on the unconsciousness valve in her brain was released. She was stirring, coming to.

She sat up, looked around, and saw him.

She came to her feet quickly, with an athletic ease. She evidently did not remember what had happened while she was unconscious, did not realize how completely she had given away basic secrets, for her face broke into a smile.

"You see?" she said. "I told you what would happen. Well, goodbye."

Her spirits visibly high, she turned, walked off into the cave, and presently disappeared as it gradually curved off to the left.

After she was gone, Cemp turned his attention back to the gravity field. He assumed that it would eventually be withdrawn or fade out, and he would be free. He had the distinct conviction that he might have only minutes in which to examine it and discover its nature.

He thought unhappily, If I could change into my Silkie form, I could really examine it.

But he dared not, could not. At least, he couldn't do it and simultaneously maintain his safe position.

Silkies had one weakness, if it could be called that. They were vulnerable when they changed from one form to another. Considering this, Cemp now conducted his first mental conversation with Joanne. He explained his predicament, described what he had learned, and ended, "I think I can stay here all day and see what comes of this, but I should probably have another Silkie stand by for emergencies."

Her anxious reply was, "I'll have Charley Baxter contact you."

4

She phoned Baxter and passed the conversation on to Cemp in thought form.

Baxter was enormously excited by the information that Cemp had obtained about the alien Silkies. He regarded the gravity field as a new energy application, but he was reluctant to send in another Silkie.

"Let's face it, Joanne," he said. "Your husband learned something last year which, if other Silkies understood it, might wreck the delicate balance by which we are maintaining our present Silkie-human civilization. Nat understands our concern about that. So tell him I'll send a machine in there to act as a barrier for him while he makes his changeover into Silkie."

It occurred to Cemp that the appearance of new, hitherto unknown Silkies would alter the Silkie-human relationship even more. But he did not permit that thought to go out to Joanne.

Baxter's conversation concluded with the statement that it would probably take a while before the machine could be got to him. "So tell him to hold on."

After Baxter had hung up, Joanne thought at Cemp, "I should tell you that I am relieved about one thing."

"What's that?"

"If the Silkie women are all as plain in human form as B-Roth, then I'm not going to worry."

An hour went by. Two ... ten.

In the world outside, the skies would be dark, the sun long gone, the stars signaling in their tiny brilliant fashion.

Charley Baxter's machine had come and gone, and Cemp, safe in the Silkie form, remained close to the most remarkable energy field that had ever been seen in the solar system. What was astounding was that it showed no diminution of its colossal gravity effect. His hope had been that with his supersensitive Silkie perception he would be able to perceive any feeder lines that might be flowing power to it from an outside source. But there was nothing like that; nothing to trace. The power came from the single small group of molecules. It had no other origin.

The minutes and the hours lengthened. The watch became long, and he had time to feel the emotional impact of the problem that now confronted every Silkie on Earth--the need to make a decision about the Space Silkies.

Morning.

Shortly after the sun came up outside, the field manifested an independent quality. It began to move along the corridor, heading deeper into the cave. Cemp floated along after it, letting a portion of its gravitational pull draw him. He was wary but curious, hopeful that now he would find out more.

The cave ended abruptly in a deep sewer, which had the look of long abandonment. The concrete was cracked, and there were innumerable deep fissures in the walls. But to the group of molecules and their field, it seemed to be a familiar area, for they went forward more rapidly. Suddenly, there was water below them. It was not stagnant, but rippled and swirled. A tidal pool, Cemp analyzed.

The water grew deeper, and presently they were in it, traveling at undiminished speed. Ahead, the murky depths grew less murky. They emerged into sunlit waters in a canyon about a hundred feet below the surface of the ocean.

As they broke surface a moment later, the strange energy complex accelerated. Cemp, suspecting that it would now try to get away from him, made a final effort to perceive its characteristics.

But nothing came back to him. No message, no sign of energy flow. For a split second, he did have the impression that the atoms making up the molecule group were somehow ... not right. But when he switched his attention to the band involved, either the molecules became aware of his momentary awareness and closed themselves off or he imagined it.

Even as he made the analysis, his feeling that he was about to be discarded was borne out. The particle's speed increased rapidly. In seconds, its velocity approached the limits of what he could permit himself to endure inside an atmosphere. The outer chitin of his Silkie body grew hot, then hotter.

Reluctantly, Cemp adjusted his own atomic structure, so that the gravity of the alien field no longer affected him. As he fell away, it continued to pursue a course that took an easterly direction, where the sun was now about an hour above the horizon. Within mere seconds of his separation from it, it left the atmosphere and, traveling at many miles a second, headed seemingly straight for the sun.

Cemp came to the atmosphere's edge. "Gazing" by means of his Silkie perceptors out upon the vast, dark ocean of space beyond, he contacted the nearest Telstar unit. To the scientists aboard, he gave a fix on the speeding molecule group. Then he waited hopefully while they tried to put a tracer on it.

But the word finally came, "Sorry, we get no reaction."

Baffled, Cemp let himself be drawn by Earth's gravity. Then, by a series of controlled adjustments to the magnetic and gravity fields of the planet, he guided himself to the Silkie Authority.

5

Three hours of talk ...

Cemp, who, as the only Silkie present, occupied a seat near the foot of the long table, found the discussion boring.

It had early seemed to him that he or some other Silkie ought to be sent to the Silkie planetoid to learn the facts, handle the matter in a strictly logical but humanitarian fashion, and report back to the Authority.

If, for some reason, the so-called Silkie nation proved unamenable to reason, then a further discussion would be in order.

As he waited for the three dozen human conferees to reach the same decision, he couldn't help but notice the order of importance at the table.

The Special People, including Charley Baxter, were at the head of the long table. Next, ranging down on either side, were the ordinary human beings. Then, on one side, himself, and below him, three minor aides and the official secretary of the three-man Silkie Authority.

It was not a new observation for him. He had discussed it with other Silkies, and it had been pointed out to him that here was a reversal of the power role that was new in history. The strongest individuals in the solar system--the Silkies were still relegated to secondary status.

He emerged from his reverie to realize that silence had fallen. Charley Baxter, slim, gray-eyed, intense, was coming around the long table. He stopped across from Cemp.

"Well, Nat," said Baxter, "there's the picture as we see it." He seemed embarrassed.

Cemp did a lightning mental backtrack on the discussion and realized that they had indeed arrived at the inevitable conclusion. But he noted also that they considered it a weighty decision. It was a lot to ask of any person, that was the attitude. The result could be personal disaster. They wouldn't be critical if he refused.

"I feel ashamed to ask it," said Baxter, "but this is almost a war situation."

Cemp could see that they were not sure of themselves. There had been no war on Earth for a hundred and fifty years. No one was an expert in it any more.

He climbed to his feet as these awarenesses touched him. Now he looked around at the faces turned to him and said, "Calm yourselves, gentlemen. Naturally I'll do it."

They all looked relieved. The discussion turned quickly to details--the difficulty of locating a single meteorite in space, particularly one that had such a long sidereal period.

It was well known that there were about fifteen hundred large meteorites and planetoids and tens of thousands of smaller objects orbiting the sun. All these had orbits or motions that, though subject to the laws of celestial mechanics, were often very eccentric. A few of them, like comets, periodically came in close to the sun, then shot off into space again, returning for another hectic go-round fifty to a hundred years later. There were so many of these intermediate-sized rocks that they were identified and their courses plotted only for special reasons. There had simply never been any point in tracking them all.

Cemp had matched course with and landed on scores of lone meteorites. His recollections of those experiences were among the bleaker memories of his numerous space flights--the darkness, the sense of utterly barren rock, the profound lack of sensory stimulation. Oddly, the larger they were, the worse the feeling was.

He had discovered that he could have a kind of intellectual affinity with a rock less than a thousand feet in diameter. This was particularly true when he encountered an inarticulate mass that had finally been precipitated into a hyperbolic orbit. When he computed that it was thus destined to leave the solar system forever, he would find himself imagining how long it had been in space, how far it had gone, and how it would now hurtle away from the solar system and spend eons between the stars, and he could not help feeling a sense of loss.

A government representative--a human being named John Mathews--interrupted his thought. "Mr. Cemp, I'd like to ask you a very personal question."

Cemp looked at him and nodded.

The man went on, "According to reports, several hundred Earth Silkies have already defected to these native Silkies. Evidently, you don't feel as they do, that the Silkie planetoid is home. Why not?"

Cemp smiled. "Well, first of all," he said, "I would never buy a pig in a poke the way they have done."

He hesitated. Then, in a serious tone, he continued. "Entirely apart from my feelings of loyalty to Earth, I do not believe the future of life forms will be helped or advanced by any rigid adherence to the idea that I am a lion, or I am a bear. Intelligent life is, or should be, moving toward a common civilization. Maybe I'm like the farm boy who went to the city--Earth. Now my folks want me to come back to the farm. They'll never understand why I can't, so I don't even try to explain it to them."

"Maybe," said Mathews, "the planetoid is actually the big city and Earth the farm. What then?"

Cemp smiled politely but merely shook his head.

Mathews persisted, "One more question. How should Silkies be treated?"

Cemp spread his hands. "I can't think of a single change that would be of value."

He meant it. He had never been able to get excited about the pecking order. Yet he had known for a long time that some Silkies felt strongly about their inferior--as it seemed to them--role. Others, like himself, did their duty, were faithful to their human wives, and tried to enjoy the somewhat limited possibilities of human civilization--limited for Silkies, who had so many additional senses for which there was no real creative stimulation.

Presumably, things could be better. But meanwhile, they were what they were. Cemp recognized that any attempt to alter them would cause fear and disturbance among human beings. And why do that merely to satisfy the egos of somewhat fewer than two thousand Silkies?

At least, that had been the problem until now. The coming of the space Silkies would add an indefinite number of new egos to the scene, yet, Cemp reasoned, not enough to change the statistics meaningfully.

Aloud, he said, "As far as I can see, under all conceivable circumstances, there is no better solution to the Silkie problem than that which exists right now."

Charley Baxter chose that moment to end the discussion, saying, "Nat, you have our best, our very best, wishes. And our complete confidence. A spaceship will rush you to Mercury's orbit and give you a head start. Good luck."

6

The scene ahead was absolutely fantastic.

The Silkie planetoid would make its circuit of the sun far inside Mercury's eccentric orbit, and the appearance was that it might brush the edges of the great clouds of hot gas that seemed to poke out like streamers or shapeless arms from the sun's hot surface.

Cemp doubted if such a calamity would actually occur, but as he periodically subjected his steel-hard chitinous Silkie body to the sun's gravity, he sensed the enormous pull of it at this near distance. The circle of white fire filled almost the entire sky ahead. The light was so intense and came in on him on so many bands that it overwhelmed his receptor system whenever he let it in. And he had to open up at intervals in order to make readjustments in his course.

The two hurtling bodies--his own and that of the planetoid--were presently on a collision course. The actual moment of "collision" was still hours away. So Cemp shut off his entire perception system. Thus, instantly, he sank into the deep sleep that Silkies so rarely allowed themselves.

He awoke in stages and saw that his timing had been exact. The planetoid was now "visible" on one of the tiny neural screens inside the forward part of his body. It showed as a radar-type image, and at the beginning it was the size of a pea.

In less than thirty minutes it grew to an apparent size of five miles, which was half its diameter, he estimated.

At this point, Cemp performed his only dangerous maneuver. He allowed the sun's gravity, to draw him between the sun and the planetoid. Then he cut off the sun's gravity and, using a few bursts of energy manufactured at the edge of a field behind his body, darted toward the planetoid's surface.

What was dangerous about this action was that it brought him in on the dayside. With the superbrilliant sunlight behind him, he was clearly visible to anyone in or on or around the planetoid. But his theory was that no Silkie would normally be exposing himself to the sun, that in fact, every sensible Silkie would be inside the big stone ball or on its night side.

At close range in that ultrabright light, the planetoid looked like the wrinkled head and face of a bald old Amerind. It was reddish-gray and pock marked and lined and not quite round. The pock marks turned out to be actual caves. Into one of these, Cemp floated. He went down into what to human eyes would have been pitch darkness, but the interior was visible to him as a Silkie on many bands.

He found himself in a corridor with smooth granite walls that led slantingly downward. After about twenty minutes he came to a turn in the passageway. As he rounded it, he saw a shimmering, almost opaque energy screen in front of him.

Cemp decided at once not to regard it as a problem. He doubted if it had been put up to catch anyone. In fact, his lightning analysis of it indicated that it was a wall, with the equivalent solidity of a large spaceship's outer skin.

As a screen it was strong enough to keep out the most massive armor-piercing shells. Going through such a screen was an exercise in Silkie energy control. First, he put up a matching field and started it oscillating. The oscillation un-stabilized the opposing screen and started it in a sympathetic vibration. As the process continued, the screen and the field began to merge. But it was the screen that became part of Cemp's field, not the reverse.

Thus, his field was within minutes a part of the barrier. Safely inside his field, he crossed the barrier space. Once past it, disengagement was a matter of slowing down the oscillation until the field and the screen abruptly became separate entities.

The sound of the separation was like the crack of a whip, and the presence of sound indicated he had come into air space. Quickly, he discovered that it was air of an unearthly mixture--thirty percent oxygen, twenty percent helium, and most of the rest gaseous sulphur compounds.

The pressure was about twice that of sea level on Earth, but it was air, and it undoubtedly had a purpose.

From where he had floated through the energy barrier, he saw a large chamber the floor of which was about a hundred feet below him.

Soft lights shone down. Seen in their light, the room was a jewel. The walls were inlaid with precious stones, fine metals, and vari-colored rock cunningly cut into a design. The design was a continuing story picture of a race of four-legged centaur-type beings with a proud bearing and--wherever there were close-ups--sensitive though nonhuman faces.

On the floor was a picture of a planet inset in some kind of glowing substance that showed the curving, mountainous surface, with sparkling lines where rivers flowed, likenesses of forests and other growth, glinting oceans and lakes, and thousands of bright spots marking cities and towns.

The sides of the planet curved away in proper proportion, and Cemp had the feeling that the globe continued on down and that the bottom was probably visible in some lower room.

The overall effect was completely and totally beautiful.

Cemp surmised that the life scenes and the planet picture were an accurate eidolon of a race and a place with which the Silkies had at some time in their past been associated.

He was mentally staggered by the artistic perfection of the room.

He had already, as he floated down, noticed that there were large archways leading to adjoining chambers. He had glimpses of furniture, machines, objects, shining bright and new. He surmised they were artifacts of either the centaur or other civilizations. But he could not take time to explore. His attention fastened on a stairway that led down to the next level.

He went down it and presently found himself facing another energy barrier. Penetrating it exactly as he had the other, he moved on and into a chamber filled with sea water. Inset in the floor of that huge room was a planet that glimmered with the green-blue of an under-sea civilization.

And that was only the beginning. Cemp went down from one level to another, each time through an energy screen and through a similarly decorated chamber. Each was inlaid in the same way with precious stones and glinting metals. Each had breathtaking scenes from what he presumed were habitable planets of far stars, and each had a different atmosphere.

After a dozen such chambers, Cemp found that the impact was cumulative. Realization came to him that here, inside this planetoid, had been gathered such treasure as probably did not exist anywhere else. Cemp visualized the seven-hundred-odd cubic miles that comprised the interior of the most fantastic asteroid in the galaxy, and he remembered what Mathews had said--that perhaps the planetoid was the "city" and Earth was the "farm".

It began to seem that the man's speculation might be truth.

He had been expecting to collide momentarily with an inhabitant of the planetoid. After passing three more chambers, each with its glowing duplicate in miniature of a planet of long ago and far away, Cemp paused and reconsidered.

He had a strong feeling that in learning of these treasures, he had gained an advantage--which he must not lose--and that the Silkies did indeed have their living quarters on the side away from the sun and that they did not expect anyone to arrive in this surprise fashion.

The idea continued to seem correct, and so he turned back and was presently dropping directly toward the dark side. Again the cave openings and, a few score feet inside, the energy barrier. Beyond that were air and gravitation exactly like those at sea level on Earth.

Cemp floated down into a smoothly polished granite chamber. It was furnished with settees, chairs, and tables, and there was a long, low-built bookcase at one end. But the arrangement was like that in an anteroom--formal and unlived in. It gave him an eerie feeling.

Still in his Silkie form, he went down a staircase and into another chamber. It had soil in it, and there was vegetation, which consisted of temperate-zone Earth shrubs and flowers. Once more, the arrangement was formal.

On the third level down were Earthlike offices, with information computers. Cemp, who understood such matters, recorded what they were. He observed also that no one was using this particular source of data.

He was about to go down to the next level, when an energy beam of enormous power triggered the superfast defense screen he had learned from the Kibmadine.

The coruscation as the beam interacted, in an ever-vaster intensity, with Cemp's barrier screen lit the chamber as if sunlight had suddenly been let in. It stayed lit as whoever was directing the beam tested the screen's durability in a sustained power thrust.

For Cemp, it was a fight that moved at lightning speed down the entire line of his defenses and came finally up against the hard core of the second method the Kibmadine had taught him.

There, and only there, he held his own.

7

A minute went by before the attacker finally seemed to accept that Cemp simply used the beam itself to maintain the barrier. Hence, it took nothing out of him, and the barrier would last as long as the beam did, reforming as often as necessary.

As suddenly as it had begun, the attacking energy ceased.

Cemp stared around him, dismayed. The entire chamber was a shambles of twisted, white-hot machinery and debris. The granite walls had crumbled, exposing raw meteorite rock. Molten rock dripped in a score of flowing rivers from the shattered ceiling and walls. Great sections were still tumbling and sliding.

What had been a modern office had become in a matter of minutes a gutted desolation of blackened metal and rock.

For Cemp, the initial staggering reality was that only the high-speed Kibmadine screen had saved him. The assault had been gauged to overwhelm and overspeed the entire Silkie defense and attack system.

The intent had been death. No bargaining, no discussion, no questions.

The hard fight had driven him down to a special logic of levels. He felt an automatic outflow of hatred.

Yet after a little, another realization penetrated. I won! he thought.

Calm again but savage, he went down five more levels and emerged abruptly at the upper level of a great vista, a huge open space. The city of the space Silkies spread below him.

It was precisely and exactly a small Earth city--apartment buildings, private residences, tree-lined streets. Cemp was bemused, for here, too, the native Silkies had clearly attempted to create a human atmosphere.

He could make out figures on a sidewalk far below. He started down. When he was a hundred feet above them, the people stopped and looked up at him. One--a woman--directed a startled thought at him. "Who are you?"

Cemp told her.

The reaction of the four nearest people was astonishment. But they were not afraid or hostile.

The little group, three women and one man, waited for him. As Cemp came down, he was aware that they were signaling to others. Soon a crowd had gathered, mostly in human bodies, mostly women, but an even dozen arrived in Silkie form.

Guards? he wondered. But they were not antagonistic either. Everybody was mentally open, and what was disconcerting about that was, no one showed any awareness of the attack that had been made on him in the office section near the surface.

Instantly, he saw their unawareness as an opportunity. By keeping silent and alert, he would be able to spot his vicious assailant. He presumed that the violence had been planned and carried out at the administrative level,

I'll find those so and sos! he thought grimly.

To his audience of innocent citizens, he said, "I'm acting as an emissary of the Earth Government. My purpose here is to discover what binding agreements are possible."

A woman called up to him, "We can't seem to change into attractive females, Earth-style. What do you suggest?"

A gale of laughter greeted her remark, Cemp was taken aback. He hadn't expected such easy friendliness from the crowd. But his determination did not waver. "I presume we can discuss that at government level," he said, "but it won't be first on the agenda."

Some remnants of his hate flow must have gone out to them with this thought, for a man said sharply, "He doesn't sound very friendly."

A woman added quickly, "Come now, Mr. Cemp. This is your real home."

Cemp had recovered. He replied in a steady, level thought, "You'll get what you give. Right now, you're giving good. But the agents your government sent to Earth made bloodthirsty threats."

His thought paused there, puzzled. For these people as they were right now did not seem to have any of that threat in them. It struck him that that should be very significant.

After a moment's hesitation, he finished, "I'm here to discover what it's all about, so why not direct me to someone in authority?"

"We don't have authorities." That was a woman.

A man said, "Mr. Cemp, we live a completely free existence here, and you and other Earth Silkies are invited to join us."

Cemp persisted, "Who decided to send those four hundred messengers to Earth?"

"We always do that, when the time comes," another woman replied.

"Complete with threats?" asked Cemp. "Threats of death?"

The woman seemed suddenly uncertain. She turned to one of the men. "You were down there," she said. "Did you threaten violence?"

The man hesitated. "It's a little vague," he said, "but I guess so." He added quickly, "It's always been this way when E-Lerd conditions us in connection with the Power. Memory tends to fade very quickly. In fact, I hadn't recalled that threat aspect until now." He seemed astonished. "I'll be damned. I think we'd better speak to E-Lerd and find the reason for it."

Cemp telepathed directly to the man, "What was your afterfeeling about what you had done?"

"Just that I communicated that we space Silkies were here and that it was time for the Earth Silkies to become aware of their true origin."

He turned to the others. "This is incredible," he said. "I'm astounded. We need to look into E-Lerd's administration of the Power. I uttered murderous words when I was on Earth! That's not like me at all."

His complete amazement was more convincing than anything else could possibly have been.

Cemp said firmly, "I gather, then, that contrary to your earlier statements, you do have a leader and his name is E-Lerd."

One of the Silkies answered that. "No, he's not a leader, but I can see how that might be understood. We're free. No one tells us what to do. But we do delegate responsibilities. For example, E-Lerd is in charge of the Power, and we get its use through him. Would you like to talk to him, Mr. Cemp?"

"Indeed I would," said Cemp with intense satisfaction.

He was thinking, The Power! Of course. Who else? The person who has control of the Power is the only one who could have attacked me!

"My name is O-Vedd," said the space Silkie. "Come with me."

His long, bulletlike body detached itself from the group of similar bodies and darted off over the heads of the crowd. Cemp followed. They came down to a small entrance and into a narrow, smooth-walled granite corridor. After a hundred feet this opened out to another huge space. Here was a second city.

At least, for a moment that was what it looked like.

Then Cemp saw that the buildings were of a different character--not dwellings at all. For him, who was familiar with most of the paraphernalia of manufactured energy, there was no question. Some of the massive structures below were the kind that housed atomic power. Others were distributing plants for electricity. Still others had the unmistakable shape of the Ylem transformation systems.

None of these, of course, was the Power, but here indeed was power in abundance.

Cemp followed O-Vedd down to the courtyard of a building complex that, despite all its shields, he had no difficulty in identifying as a source of magnetic beams.

The space Silkie landed and transformed to human form, then stood and waited for Cemp to do likewise.

"Nothing doing 1" said Cemp curtly. "Ask him to come out here."

O-Vedd shrugged. As a human he was short and dark. He walked off and vanished into a doorway.

Cemp waited amid a silence that was broken only by the faint hum of power from the buildings. A breeze touched the supersensitive spy-ray extensions that he maintained in operation under all circumstances. The little wind registered through the spy mechanism but did not trigger the defense screens behind it.

It was only a breeze, after all, and he had never programmed himself to respond to such minor signals. He was about to dismiss it from his mind, about to contemplate his reaction to the space Silkies--he liked the crowd he had seen--when he thought sharply, A breeze here!

Up went his screen. Out projected his perceptors. He had time to notice, then, that it was indeed a breeze but that it was being stirred by a blankness in the surrounding space. Around Cemp, the courtyard grew hazy; then it faded.

There was no planetoid.

Cemp increased all signal sensitivity to maximum. He continued to float in the vacuum of space, and off to one side was the colossal white circle that was the sun. Suddenly, he felt energy drain from his body. The sensation was of his Silkie screens going up, of his system resisting outside energy at many levels.

He thought in tense dismay, I'm in a fight. It's another attempt to kill me.

Whatever it was, it was automatic. His own perception remained cut off, and he was impelled to experience what the attacker wanted him to.

Cemp felt like a man suddenly set upon in pitch darkness. But what was appalling about it was that his senses were being held by other forces, preventing awareness of the nature of the attack. What he saw was--

Distance disappeared!

There, spread over many miles of space, was a group of Silkies. Cemp saw them clearly, counted in his lightning fashion two hundred and eighty-eight, caught their thoughts, and recognized that these were the renegade Silkies from Earth.

Suddenly, he understood that they had been told where the Silkie planetoid was and were on their way "home".

Time was telescoped.

The entire group of Silkies was transported in what seemed an instant to within a short distance of the planetoid. Cemp could see the planetoid in the near distance--only a few miles away, twenty at the maximum.

But to him the baffling, deadly, fantastic thing was that as these marvelous events ran their course at one level of his perception, at another level the feeling remained that a determined attempt was being made to kill him.

He could see, feel, be aware of almost nothing. But throughout, the shadowy sensations continued. His energy fields were going through defensive motions. But it was all far away from his awareness, like a human dream.

Being a fully trained Silkie, Cemp watched the internal as well as the external developments with keen observation, strove instant by instant to grasp the reality, monitored incoming signals by the thousands.

He began to sense meaning and to formulate initial speculations about the nature of the physical-world phenomenon involved. And he had the feeling of being on the verge of his first computation, when, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

The space scene began to fade. Abruptly, it winked out.

He was back in the courtyard of the buildings that housed the magnetic-power complex. Coming toward him from the open doorway of the main building was O-Vedd. He was accompanied by a man who was of Cemp's general human build--over six feet and strongly muscled. His face was heavier than Cemp's, and his eyes were brown instead of gray.

As he came near, he said, "I am E-Lerd. Let's talk."

8

"To begin with, I want to tell you the history of the Silkies," E-Lerd said.

Cemp was electrified by the statement. He had been braced for a bitter quarrel, and he could feel in himself a multitude of readjusting energy flows ... proof of the severity of the second all-out fight he had been in. And he absolutely required a complete explanation for the attacks on him.

At that moment, caught up as he was in a steely rage, nothing else could have diverted his attention. But ... the history of the Silkies! To Cemp, it was instantly the most important subject in the universe.

The Silkie planetoid, E-Lerd began, had entered the solar system from outer space nearly three hundred years before. It had, in due course, been drawn into a Sol-Neptunian orbit. On its first encirclement of the Sun, Silkies visited the inner planets and found that Earth alone was inhabited.

Since they could change form, they studied the biological structure necessary to function in the two atmospheres of Earth--air and water--and set up an internal programming for that purpose.

Unfortunately, a small percentage of the human population, it was soon discovered, could tune in on the thoughts of Silkies. All those who did so in this first visit were quickly hunted down and their memories of the experience blotted out.

But because of these sensitive humans, it became necessary for Silkies to seem to be the product of human biological experiments. An interrelationship with human females was accordingly programmed into Silkies, so that the human female ovum and the male Silkie sperm would produce a Silkie who knew nothing of Silkie history.

In order to maintain this process on an automatic level, the Special People--those persons who could read Silkie minds--were maneuvered into being in charge of it.

Thereupon, all but one of the adult Silkies returned to their planetoid, which now went to the remote end of its orbit. When it came again into the vicinity of Earth, more than a hundred years later, cautious visits were made.

It became apparent that several unplanned things had happened. Human biologists had experimented with the process. As a result, in the early stages, variants had been born. These had propagated their twisted traits and were continuing to do so, growing ever more numerous.

The actual consequences were: a number of true Silkies, capable of making the three-fold transformation at will; class-B Silkies, who could transform from human to fish state, but could not become space people; and a stable form, Variants!

The last two groups had largely taken to the oceans. Accordingly it was decided to leave the class-B Silkies alone but to make an effort to inveigle Variants into gigantic spaceships filled with water where they would be isolated and prevented from interbreeding.

This plan was already underway by the time the Silkie planetoid made its round of the sun and again headed out toward far Neptune.

Now they were back, and they had found an unfortunate situation. Somehow, Earth science, virtually ignored by the early visitors, had achieved a method for training the Silkie perception system.

The Earth Silkies had become a loyal-to-Earth, tight-knit, masterful group of beings, lacking only the Power.

Cemp "read" all this in E-Lerd's thought, and then, because he was amazed, he questioned him about what seemed a major omission in his story. Where had the Silkie planetoid come from?

E-Lerd showed his first impatience. "These journeys are too far," he telepathed. "They take too long. Nobody remembers origins. Some other star system, obviously."

"Are you serious?" Cemp was astounded. "You don't know?"

But that was the story. Pry at it as he might, it did not change. Although E-Lerd's mind remained closed except for his telepathed thoughts, O-Vedd's mind was open. In it Cemp saw the same beliefs and the same lack of information.

But why the tampering with human biology and the intermixing of the two breeds?

"We always do that. That's how we live--in a relationship with the inhabitants of a system."

"How do you know you always do that? You just told me you can't remember where you came from this time or where you were before that."

"Well ... it's obvious from the artifacts we brought along."

E-Lerd's attitude dismissed the questions as being irrelevant. Cemp detected a mind phenomenon in the other that explained the attitude. To space Silkies, the past was unimportant. Silkies always did certain things, because that was the way they were mentally, emotionally, and physically constructed.

A Silkie didn't have to know from past experience. He simply had to be what was innate in Silkies.

It was, Cemp realized, a basic explanation for much that he had observed. This was why these Silkies had never been trained scientifically. Training was an alien concept in the cosmos of the space Silkies.

"You mean," he protested, incredulous, "you have no idea why you left the last system where you had this interrelationship with the race there? Why not stay forever in some system where you have located yourself?"

"Probably," said E-Lerd, "somebody got too close to the secret of the Power. That could not be permitted."

That was the reason, he continued, why Cemp and other Silkies had to come back into the fold. As Silkies, they might learn about the Power.

The discussion had naturally come around to that urgent subject.

"What," said Cemp, "is the Power?"

E-Lerd stated formally that that was a forbidden subject.

Then I shall have to force the secret from you," said Cemp. There can be no agreement without it."

E-Lerd replied stiffly that any attempt at force would require him to use the Power as a defense.

Cemp lost patience. "After your two attempts to kill me," he telepathed in a steely rage, "I'll give you thirty seconds--"

"What attempts to kill you?" said E-Lerd, surprised.

At that precise moment, as Cemp was bracing himself to use logic of levels, there was an interruption.

An "impulse" band--a very low, slow vibration--touched one of the receptors in the forward part of his brain. It operated at mere multiples of the audible sound range directly on his sound-receiving system.

What was new was that the sound acted as a carrier for the accompanying thought. The result was as if a voice spoke clearly and loudly into his ears.

"You win," said the voice. "You have forced me. I shall talk to you myself--bypassing my unknowing servants."

9

Cemp identified the incoming thought formation as a direct contact. Accordingly, his brain, which was programmed to respond instantaneously to a multitude of signals, was triggered into an instant effort to suction more impulses from the sending brain ... and he got a picture. A momentary glimpse, so brief that even after a few seconds it was hard to be sure that it was real and not a figment of fantasy.

Something huge lay in the darkness deep inside the planetoid. It lay there and gave forth with an impression of vast power. It had been withholding itself, watching him with some tiny portion of itself. The larger whole understood the universe and could manipulate massive sections of space-time.

"Say nothing to these others." Again the statement was a direct contact that sounded like spoken words.

The dismay that had seized on Cemp in the last few moments was on the level of desperation. He had entered the Silkie stronghold in the belief that his human training and Kibmadine knowledge gave him a temporary advantage over the space Silkies and that if he did not delay, he could win a battle that might resolve the entire threat from these natural Silkies.

Instead, he had come unsuspecting into the lair of a cosmic giant. He thought, appalled, Here is what has been called "the Power".

And if the glimpse he had had was real, then it was such a colossal power that all his own ability and strength were as nothing.

He deduced now that this was what had attacked him twice. "Is that true?" he telepathed on the same band as the incoming thoughts had been on.

"Yes. I admit it."

"Why?" Cemp flashed the question. "Why did you do it?"

"So that I would not have to reveal my existence. My fear is always that if other life forms find out about me, they will analyze how to destroy me."

The direction of the alien thought altered. "But now, listen; do as follows. ..."

The confession had again stirred Cemp's emotions. The hatred that had been aroused in him had a sustained force deriving from the logic-of-levels stimulation--in this instance the body's response to an attempt at total destruction. Therefore, he had difficulty now restraining additional automatic reactions.

But the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. So, presently he was able, at the request of the monster, to say to E-Lerd and the other Silkies, "You take a while to think this over. And when the Silkies who have defected arrive from Earth, I'll talk to them. We can then have another discussion."

It was such a complete change of attitude that the two Silkies showed their surprise. But he saw that to them the change had the look of weakness and that they were relieved.

"I'll be back here in one hour!" he telepathed to E-Lerd. Whereupon he turned and climbed up and out of the courtyard, darting to an opening that led by a roundabout route deeper into the planetoid.

Again the low, slow vibration touched his receptors. "Come closer!" the creature urged.

Cemp obeyed, on the hard-core principle that either he could defend himself--or he couldn't. Down he went, past a dozen screens, to a barren cave, a chamber that had been carved out of the original meteorite stuff. It was not even lighted. As he entered, the direct thought touched his mind again: "Now we can talk."

Cemp had been thinking at furious speed, striving to adjust to a danger so tremendous that he had no way of evaluating it. Yet the Power had revealed itself to him rather than let E-Lerd find out anything. That seemed to be his one hold on it; and he had the tense conviction that even that was true only as long as he was inside the planetoid.

He thought ... Take full advantage!

He telepathed, "After those attacks, you'll have to give me some straight answers, if you expect to deal with me."

"What do you want to know?"

"Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you want?"

It didn't know who it was. "I have a name," it said. "I am the Glis. There used to be many like me long ago. I don't know what happened to them."

"But what are you?"

It had no knowledge. An energy life form of unknown origin, traveling from one star system to another, remaining for a while, then leaving.

"But why leave? Why not stay?" sharply.

"The time comes when I have done what I can for a particular system."

By using its enormous power, it transported large ice-and-air meteorites to airless planets and made them habitable, cleared away dangerous space debris, altered poisonous atmospheres into nonpoisonous ones. ...

"Presently the job is done, and I realize it's time to go on to explore the infinite cosmos. So I make my pretty picture of the inhabited planets, as you saw, and head for outer space."

"And the Silkies?"

They were an old meteorite life form.

"I found them long ago, and because I needed mobile units that could think, I persuaded them into a permanent relationship."

Cemp did not ask what persuasive methods had been used. In view of the Silkies' ignorance of what they had a relationship with, he divined that a sly method had been used. But still, what he had seen showed an outwardly peaceful arrangement. The Glis had agents--the Silkies--who acted for it in the world of tiny movements. They, in turn, had at their disposal bits and pieces of the Glis's own "body", which could apparently be programmed for specific tasks beyond the Silkies' ability to perform.

"I am willing," said the Glis, "to make the same arrangement with your government for as long as I remain in the solar system."

But absolute secrecy would be necessary.

"Why?"

There was no immediate reply, but the communication band remained open. And along the line of communication there flowed an essence of the reaction from the Glis--an impression of unmatched power, of a being so mighty that all other individuals in the universe were less by some enormous percentage.

Cemp felt staggered anew. But he telepathed, "I must tell someone. Somebody has to know."

"No other Silkies--absolutely."

Cemp didn't argue. All these millennia, the Glis had kept its identity hidden from the space Silkies. He had a total conviction that it would wreck the entire planetoid to prevent them from learning it.

He had been lucky. It had fought him at a level where only a single chamber of the meteorite had been destroyed. It had restricted itself.

"Only the top government leaders and the Silkie Council may know," the Glis continued.

It seemed an adequate concession; yet Cemp had an awful suspicion that in the long past of this creature every person who uncovered its secret had been murdered.

Thinking thus, he could not compromise. He demanded, "Let me have a complete view of you--what I caught a fleeting glimpse of earlier."

He sensed, then, that the Glis hesitated.

Cemp urged, "I promise that only the persons you named will be told about this--but we must know!"

Floating there in the cave in his Silkie form, Cemp felt a change of energy tension in the air and in the ground. Although he put forth no additional probing energies, he recognized that barriers were going down. And presently he began to record.

His first impression was of hugeness. Cemp estimated, after a long, measuring look, that the creature, a circular rocklike structure, was about a thousand feet in diameter. It was alive, but it was not a thing of flesh and blood. It "fed" from some inner energy that rivaled what existed in the heart of the sun.

And Cemp noticed a remarkable phenomenon. Magnetic impulses that passed through the creature and impinged on his senses were altered in a fashion that he had never observed before--as if they had passed through atoms of a different structure than anything he knew.

He remembered the fleeting impression he had had from the molecule. This was the same but on a massive scale. What startled him was that all his enormous training in such matters gave no Clue to what the structure might be.

"Enough?" asked the creature.

Doubtfully, Cemp said, "Yes."

Glis accepted his reluctant agreement as a complete authorization. What had been a view through and past the cave wall disappeared abruptly.

The alien thought spoke into his mind, "I have done a very dangerous thing for me in thus revealing myself. Therefore, I again earnestly impress on you the importance of a limited number of people being told what you have just witnessed."

In secrecy, it continued, lay the greatest safety, not only for it, but for Cemp.

"I believe," said the creature, "that what I can do is overwhelming. But I could be wrong. What disturbs me is, there is only one of me. I would hate to suddenly feel the kind of fear that might motivate me to destroy an entire system."

The implied threat was as deadly--and as possible--as anything Cemp had ever heard. Cemp hesitated, feeling overwhelmed, desperate for more information.

He flashed, "How old do Silkies get?" and added quickly, "We've had no experience, since none has yet died a natural death."

"About a thousand of your Earth years," was the answer.

"What have you in mind for Earth-born Silkies? Why did you want us to return here?"

Again there was a pause; once more the sense of colossal power. But presently with it there came a reluctant admission that new Silkies, born on planets, normally had less direct knowledge of the Glis than those who had made the latest trip.

Thus, the Glis had a great interest in ensuring that plenty of time was allowed for a good replacement crop of unknowing young Silkies.

It finished, "You and I shall have to make a special agreement. Perhaps you can have E-Lerd's position and be my contact."

Since E-Lerd no longer remembered that he was the contact, Cemp had no sense of having being offered anything but ... danger.

He thought soberly, I'll never be permitted to come back here, once I leave.

But that didn't matter. The important thing was--get away! At once!

10

At the Silkie Authority, the computer gave four answers.

Cemp rejected two of them at once. They were, in the parlance of computer technology, "trials". The machine simply presented all the bits of information, strung out in two lookovers. By this means a living brain could examine the data in segments. But Cemp did not need such data--not now.

Of the remaining two answers, one postulated a being akin to a god. But Cemp had experienced the less-than-godlike powers of the Glis, in that it had twice failed to defeat him. True, he believed that it had failed to destroy him because it did not wish to destroy the planetoid. But an omnipotent god would not have found that a limitation.

He had to act as if the amazing fourth possibility were true. The picture that had come through in that possibility was one of ancientness. The mighty being hidden in the planetoid predated most planetary systems.

"In the time from which it derives," said the computer, "there were, of course, stars and star systems, but they were different. The natural laws were not what they are today. Space and time have made adjustments since then, grown older; therefore, the present appearance of the universe is different from that which the Glis knew at its beginnings. This seems to give it an advantage, for it knows some of the older shapes of atoms and molecules and can re-create them. Certain of these combinations reflect the state of matter when it was--the best comparison--younger."

The human government group, to whom Cemp presented this data, was stunned. Like himself, they had been basing their entire plan on working out a compromise with the space Silkies. Now, suddenly, here was a colossal being with unknown power.

"Would you say," asked one man huskily, "that to a degree the Silkies are slaves of this creature?"

Cemp said, "E-Lerd definitely didn't know what he was dealing with. He simply had what he conceived to be a scientific system for utilizing a force of nature. The Glis responded to his manipulation of this system, as if it were simply another form of energy. But I would guess that it controlled him, perhaps through preconditioning installed long ago."

As he pointed out, such a giant life form would not be concerned with the everyday living details of its subjects. It would be satisfied with having a way of invariably getting them to do what it wanted.

"But what does it want?" That came from another man.

"It goes around doing good," said Cemp with a tight smile. "That's the public image it tried to give me. I have the impression that it's willing to make over the solar system to our specifications."

At this point Mathews spoke. "Mr. Cemp," he said, "what does all this do to the Silkie situation?"

Cemp said that the Silkies who had defected had clearly acted hastily; "But," he finished, "I should tell you that I find the space Silkies a very likeable group. In my opinion, they are not the problem. They have the same problem, in another way, that we have."

"Nat," said Charley Baxter, "do you trust this monster?"

Cemp hesitated, remembering the deadly attacks, remembering that only the Kibmadine defense screen and energy-reversal process had saved him. He remembered, too, that the great being had been compelled to reveal its presence to prevent him from forcing E-Lerd to open his mind--which would have informed the space Silkies of the nature of the Power.

"No!" he said.

Having spoken, he realized that a simple negative was not answer enough. It could not convey the reality of the terrifying danger that was out there in space.

He said slowly, "I realize that my own motives may be suspect in what I am about to say, but it's my true opinion. I think all Earth Silkies should be given full knowledge of the Kibmadine attack-and-defense system at once and that they should be assigned to work in teams to keep a constant watch on the Glis, permitting no one to leave the planetoid--except to surrender."

There was a pregnant silence. Then a scientist said in a small voice, "Any chance of logic of levels applying?"

"I don't see how," said Cemp.

"I don't either," said the man unhappily.

Cemp addressed the group again. "I believe we should gird ourselves to drive this thing from the solar system. We're not safe until it's gone."

As he finished speaking, he sensed an energy tension ... familiar! He had a sensation, then, of cosmic distance and cosmic time--opening. Power unlimited!

It was the same feeling he had had in the second attack, when his senses had been confused.

The fear that came to Cemp in that moment had no parallel in his experience. It was the fear of a man who suddenly has a fleeting glimpse of death and destruction for all his own kind and for his planet.

As he had that awful consciousness, Cemp whirled from where he was standing. He ran headlong toward the great window behind him, shattering it with an arc of lightning as he did so. And with eyes closed against the flying glass, he plunged out into the empty air seventy stories above the ground.

As he fell, the fabric of space and time collapsed around him like a house of cards tumbling. Cemp transformed into class-C Silkie and became immensely more perceptive. Now he sensed the nature of the colossal energy at work--a gravitational field so intense that it actually closed in upon itself. Encompassing all things, organic and inorganic, it squeezed with irresistible power. ...

Defensively, Cemp put up, first, his inverter system ... and perceived that that was not the answer.

Instantly, he triggered gravity transformation--an infinitely variable system that converted the encroaching superfield to a harmless energy in relation to himself.

With that, he felt the change slow. It did not stop. He was no longer so involved, so enveloped; yet he was not completely free.

He realized what held him. He was oriented to this massive segment of space-time. To an extent, anything that happened here happened to him. To that extent, he could not get away.

The world grew dim. The sun disappeared.

Cemp saw with a start that he was inside a chamber and realized that his automatic screens had protected him from striking the hard, glittering walls.

And he became aware of three other realities. The chamber was familiar, in that there below him was one of the glowing images of a planet. The image showed the oceans and the continents, and since he was looking down at it, he felt that he was somehow back inside the Silkie planetoid, in one of the "art" rooms.

What was different was that as he looked down at the planetary image, he saw the familiar outlines of the continents and oceans of Earth. And he realized that the feeling of a virtually unlimited force pressing in was a true explanation of what was happening.

The ancient monster that lived at the core of the planetoid had taken Earth, compressed it and everything on it from an 8,000-mile-in-diameter planet into a hundred-foot ball, and added the ball to its fabulous collection.

It was not a jewel-like image of Earth there in the floor--it was Earth itself.

Even as he had the thought, Cemp sensed that the planetoid was increasing its speed.

He thought, We're leaving the solar system.

In a matter of minutes, as he hovered there, helpless to act, the speed of the planetoid became hundreds, then thousands of miles a second.

After about an hour of continuing acceleration, the velocity of the tiny planetoid, in its ever-widening hyperbolic orbit, was nearly half that of light.

A few hours later, the planetoid was beyond the orbit of Pluto, and it was traveling at near light speed.

And still accelerating ...

11

Cemp began to brace himself. Anger spilled through him like a torrent down a rocky decline.

"You incredible monster!" he telepathed.

No answer.

Cemp raged on, "You're the most vicious creature that ever existed. I'm going to see that you get what's coming to you!"

This time he got a reply. "I'm leaving the solar system forever," said the Glis. "Why don't you get off before it's too late? I'll let you get away."

Cemp had no doubt of that. He was its most dangerous enemy, and his escape and unexpected appearance must have come as a hideous shock to the Glis.

"I'm not leaving," he retorted, "until you undo what you've done to Earth."

There was silence.

"Can you and will you?" Cemp demanded.

"No. It's impossible." The response came reluctantly.

"But you could, if you wanted to, bring Earth back to size."

"No. But I now wish I had not taken your planet," said the Glis unhappily. "It has been my policy to leave alone inhabited worlds that are protected by powerful life forms. I simply could not bring myself to believe that any Silkie was really dangerous to me. I was mistaken."

It was not the kind of repentance that Cemp respected. "Why can't you ... unsqueeze it?" he persisted.

It seemed that the Glis could create a gravity field, but it could not reverse such a field. It said apologetically, "It would take as much power to undo it as it took to do it. Where is there such power?"

Where, indeed? But still he could not give up. "I'll teach you what antigravity is like," Cemp offered, "from what I can do in my own energy-control system."

But the Glis pointed out that it had had the opportunity to study such systems in other Silkies. "Don't think I didn't try. Evidently antigravity is a late manifestation of matter and energy. And I'm an early form--as you, and only you, know."

Cemp's hope faded suddenly. Somehow, he had kept believing that there was a possibility. There wasn't.

The first grief touched him, the first real acceptance of the end of Earth.

The Glis was communicating again. "I can see that you and I now have a serious situation between us. So we must arrive at an agreement. I'll make you the leader of the Silkie nation. I'll subtly influence everything and everyone to fit your wishes. Women--as many as you desire. Control--as much as you want. Future actions of the planetoid, you and I shall decide."

Cemp did not even consider the offer. He said grimly, "You and I don't think alike. I can just imagine trusting you to leave me alone if I ever took the chance of changing to human form." He broke off, then said curtly, "The deal as I see it is a limited truce while I consider what I can do against you and you figure out what you can do to me."

"Since that's the way you feel," was the harsh reply, "let me make my position clear. If you begin any action against me, I shall first destroy Earth and the Silkie nation and then give you my attention."

Cemp replied in his own steely fashion, "If you ever damage anything I value--and that includes all Silkies and what's left of Earth--I'll attack you with everything I've got."

The Glis said scornfully, "You have nothing that can touch me--except those defense screens that reverse the attack flow. That way, you can use my own force against me. So I won't attack. Therefore--permanent stalemate."

Cemp said, "We'll see."

The Glis said, "You yourself stated that your levels of logic wouldn't work on me."

"I meant not directly," said Cemp. "There are many indirect approaches to the mind."

"I don't see how anything like that can work on me," was the reply.

At that moment, Cemp didn't either.

12

Through miles of passageways, up as well as down and roundabout, Cemp made his way. The journey took him through long chambers filled with furniture and art objects from other planets.

En route he saw strange and wonderful scenes in bas-relief and brilliant color on one wall after another. And always there were the planets themselves, glowingly beautiful, but horrifying too, in his awareness that each one represented a hideous crime.

His destination was the city of the Silkies. He followed the internal pathway to it because he dared not leave the planetoid to take an external route. The Glis had virtually admitted that it had not anticipated that he, its most dangerous enemy, would survive. So if he ever left these caves, he would have no further choice, no chance to decide on what the penalty--if any--or the outcome should be and no part at all in the Silkie future. For he would surely never be allowed to return.

Not that there was any purpose in him--his grief was too deep and terrible. He had failed to protect, failed to realize, failed in his duty.

Earth was lost. It was lost quickly, completely, a disaster so great that it could not even be contemplated for more than instants at a time.

At intervals, he mourned Joanne and Charley Baxter and other friends among the Special People and the human race.

By the time he was sunk into these miseries, he had taken up an observation position on top of a tree overlooking the main street of the Silkie city. There he waited, with all his signal systems constantly at peak alert.

While he maintained his tireless vigil, the life of the Silkie community had its being around him. The Silkies continued to live mostly as humans, and this began to seem significant.

Cemp thought, shocked, They're being kept vulnerable!

In human form, they could all be killed in a single flash of intolerable flame.

He telepathed on the Glis band: "Free them from that compulsion or I'll tell them the truth about what you are."

An immediate, ferocious answer came: "You say one word, and I shall wipe out the entire nest."

Cemp commanded, "Release them from that compulsion, or we come to our crisis right now."

His statement must have given the Glis pause, for there was a brief silence. Then, "I'll release half of them. No more. I must retain some hold over you."

Cemp considered that and realized its truth. "But it has to be on an alternating basis. Half are free for twelve hours, then the other half."

The Glis accepted the compromise without further argument. Clearly, it was prepared to recognize the balance of power.

"Where are we heading?" asked Cemp.

"To another star system."

The answer did not satisfy Cemp. Surely the Glis didn't expect to go on with its malignant game of collecting inhabited planets.

He challenged, "I feel that you have some secret purpose."

"Don't be ridiculous, and don't bother me any more."

Stalemate.

As the days and the weeks went by, Cemp tried to keep track of the distance the planetoid was covering and the direction it was going. The speed of the meteorite had reached nearly a light-year per day, Earth time.

Eighty-two of those days passed. And then there was the feel of slowing down. The deceleration continued all that day and the next. And for Cemp, there was finally no question--he could not permit this strange craft which was now his home to arrive at a destination about which he knew nothing.

"Stop this ship!" he ordered.

The Glis replied angrily, "You can't expect to control such minor things as this!"

Since it could be a deadly dangerous scheme, Cemp replied, "Then open yourself to me. Show me everything you know about this system."

"I've never been here before."

"All right, then that's what I'll see when you open up."

"I can't possibly let you look inside me. You may see something this time that will make me vulnerable to your techniques."

"Then change course."

"No. That would mean I can't go anywhere until you die about a thousand years from now. I refuse to accept such a limitation."

The second reference to Silkie age gave Cemp great pause. On Earth no one had known how long Silkies could live, since none born there had died a natural death ... He himself was only thirty-eight years of age.

"Look," he said finally, "if I have only a thousand years, why don't you just sit me out? That must be only a pinpoint in time compared with your lifespan."

"All right, we'll do that!" replied the Glis. But the deceleration continued.

Cemp telepathed, "If you don't turn aside, I must take action."

"What can you do?" was the contemptuous response.

It was a good question. What, indeed?

"I warn you," said Cemp.

"Just don't tell anyone about me. Other than that, do anything you please."

Cemp said, "I gather you've decided I'm not dangerous. And this is the way you act with those you consider harmless."

The Glis said that had Cemp been able to do something, he would already have done it. It finished, "And so I tell you flatly, I'm going to do as I please; and the only restriction on you is, don't violate my need for secrecy. Now, don't bother me again."

The meaning of the dismissal was clear. He had been judged helpless, categorized as someone whose desires need not be considered. The eighty days of inaction had stood against him. He hadn't attacked; therefore, he couldn't. That was palpably the other's logic.

Well ... what could he do?

He could make an energy assault. But that would take time to mount, and he could expect that the Silkie nation would be wiped out in retaliation and Earth destroyed.

Cemp decided that he was not ready to force such a calamity.

He was presently dismayed to realize that the Glis's analysis was correct. He could keep his mind shut and respect its need for secrecy--and nothing more.

He ought, it seemed to him, to point out to the Glis that there were different types of secrecy. Gradations. Secrecy about itself was one type. But secrecy about the star system ahead was quite another. The whole subject of secrecy--

Cemp's mind poised. Then he thought, How could I have missed it?

Yet, even as he wondered, he realized how it had happened. The Glis's need to withhold knowledge of itself had seemed understandable, and somehow the naturalness of it had made him bypass its implications. But now ...

Secrecy, he thought. Of course! That's it!

To Silkies, secrecy was an understood phenomenon.

After a few more seconds of thinking about it, Cemp took his first action. He reversed gravity in relation to the planetoid mass below him. Light as a thistledown, he floated up and away from the treetop that had been his observation post for so long. Soon he was speeding along granite corridors.

13

Without incident, Cemp reached the chamber containing Earth.

As he set his signals so that all his screens would protect that precious round ball, Cemp permitted himself another increment of hope.

Secrets! he thought again, and his mind soared.

Life, in its natural impulse, had no secrets.

Baby gurgled or cried or manifested needs instant by instant as each feeling was experienced. But the child, growing older, was progressively admonished and inhibited, subjected to a thousand restraints. Yet all his life the growing being would want openness and unrestraint, would struggle to free himself from childhood conditioning.

Conditioning was not of itself logic of levels, but it was related--a step lower. The appearance was of a control center; that is, a rigidity. But it was a created center and could be repeatedly mobilized by the correct stimulus. That part was automatic.

The decisive fact was that, since the Glis had conditioned itself to secrecy--it was conditionable.

Having reached this penultimate point in his analysis, Cemp hesitated. As a Silkie, he was conditioned to incapacitate rather than kill, to negotiate rather than incapacitate, and to promote well-being everywhere.

Even for the Glis, death should be the final consideration not the first.

So he telepathed, "In all your long span, you have feared that someone would one day learn how to destroy-you. I have to tell you that I am that feared person. So unless you are prepared to back down from those insolent statements of a little while ago, you must die."

The answer came coldly. "I let you go to your planet. Earth because I have the real hostages under my complete control--the Silkie nation!"

"That is your final statement?" Cemp questioned.

"Yes. Cease these foolish threats. They are beginning to irritate me."

Cemp now said, "I know where you come from, what you are, and what happened to others like you."

Of course, he knew nothing of the kind. But it was the technique. By stating the generalization, he would evoke from the Glis's perception and memory network, first, the truth. Then, like all living things, the Glis would immediately have the automatic impulse to give forth the information as it actually was.

Yet before it could do so, it would exercise the restraint of secrecy. And that would be an exact pattern, a reafirmation of similar precise restraints in its long, long past. His problem was to utilize it before it destimulated, because as long as it held, it was the equivalent of a logic-of-levels gestalt.

Having, according to the theory, mobilized it, Cemp transmitted the triggering signal.

A startled thought came from the Glis: "What have you done?"

It was Cemp's turn to be sly, covert, scheming. He said, "I had to call to your attention that you had better deal with me."

It was too late for the Glis to help itself, but the pretense--if successful--might save many lives.

"I wish to point out," said the Glis, "that I have not yet damaged anything of value."

Cemp was profoundly relieved to hear the statement. But he had no regrets. With such a creature as this, he could not hope to repeat what he was doing against it. Once the process was started, it was all or nothing.

"What was it you said before about bargaining?" the Glis asked urgently.

Cemp steeled himself against sympathy.

The Glis continued, "I'll give you all my secrets in exchange for your telling me what you're doing to me. I'm experiencing severe internal disturbance, and I don't know why."

Cemp hesitated. It was a tremendous offer. But he divined that once he made such a promise, he would have to keep it.

What had happened was this: As he had hoped, his final signal had triggered the equivalent of a colony gestalt, in this instance the process by which life forms slowly over the millennia adjusted to exterior change.

And the cycle-completing control centers, the growth-change mechanisms in the great being, were stimulated.

Silkies understood the nature of growth, and of change they knew much from their own bodies. But Silkies were late indeed in the scheme of life. In terms of evolution, their cells were as old as the rocks and the planets. The entire history of life's progression was in every cell of a Silkie.

That could not be true of the Glis. It was from an ancient eon, and it had stopped time within itself. Or at least, it had not passed on its seed, which was the way of change through time. In itself, it manifested old, primitive forms. Great forms they were, but the memory in each cell would be limited to what had gone before. Therefore, it couldn't know what, in holding back as it had, it was holding back from.

"I promise not to go on to the Nijjan system," said the Glis. "Observe--I'm already stopping."

Cemp sensed a cessation of the motion of the planetoid, but it seemed a minor act, not meaningful.

He merely noted, in passing, the identity of the star the Glis had named, observing that since it knew the name, it had been there before. This seemed to imply that the Glis had a purpose in going there.

It didn't matter; they were turning away from it, would never reach it. If there was a threat there for Cemp or for Silkies, it was now diverted and had been useful only in that it had forced him to action regardless of the consequences.

The Glis's willingness to make amends when it no longer had any choice was merely a sad commentary on its character, but much too late. Many planets too late, Cemp thought.

How many? he wondered. And because he was in the strange emotional condition of someone whose whole thought and effort are concentrated on a single intensely felt purpose, he asked the question aloud automatically, as it came into his mind.

"I don't think I should tell you; you might hold it against me," the Glis replied.

It must have sensed Cemp's adamant state, for it said quickly, "Eighteen hundred and twenty-three."

So many!

The total of them did not shock Cemp--it hurt him. For one of that countless number of unnecessary dead on those planets was Joanne. Another was Charley Baxter.

"Why have you done all this?" Cemp asked. "Why destroy all those planets?"

"They were so beautiful."

True. Cemp had a sudden mental vision of a great planet hanging in space, its atmosphere ballooning up above the oceans and mountains and plains. He had seen that sight often, yet found it always a thing of splendor beyond all the visual delights of the universe.

The feeling passed, for a planet was beautiful when it was brooded over by its parent sun and not as a shrunken museum piece.

The Glis with its planets was like a head hunter of old. Skillfully, he had murdered each victim. Patiently, he had reduced the head to its small size. Lovingly, he had placed it in his collection.

For the head hunter, each perfect miniature head was a symbol of his manhood. For the Glis, the planets were ... what?

Cemp couldn't imagine.

But he had delayed long enough. He sensed incipient violence on the communication band. He said hastily, "All right, I agree--as soon as you do what I want, I'll tell you exactly how I'm attacking you."

"What do you want?"

Cemp said, "First, let the other Silkies go outside."

"But you'll do as I've asked?"

"Yes. When you've released them, put me and the Earth outside, safely."

"Then you'll tell me?"

"Yes."

The Glis threatened, "If you don't, I'll smash your little planet. I will not let you or it escape, if you don't tell me."

"I'll tell you."

14

The method that was used was, the entire section of the planetoid surrounding Cemp simply lifted up and shot off into the sky. Cemp found himself floating in black, empty space, surrounded by meteorite debris.

The Glis's thought came to him, "I have done my part. Now tell me!"

Even as Cemp complied, he began to wonder if he really understood what was happening.

Uneasiness came. In setting in motion a cycle-completion process, he had taken it for granted that Nature would strike a balance. An old life form had somehow been preserved here, and in its body, evolution was now proceeding at lightning speed. Millions of years of change had already been compressed into minutes of time. Since none other of its kind remained alive, he had assumed that the species had long since evolved to ... what?

What was this creature? A chrysalis? An egg? Would it become a butterfly of space, a great worm, a gigantic bird?

Such possibilities had not occurred to him before. He had thought only of the possibility of extinction. But--it struck him keenly--he hadn't considered seriously enough what extinction might consist of in its end product.

Indeed, he hadn't thought about the existence of an end product.

Unhappily, Cemp remembered what the computer had reported--that the atomic structure of this giant being reflected a younger state of matter.

Could it be that, as the particles "adjusted" and changed to current norm, energy would be released on a hitherto unknown scale?

Below, a titanic thing happened.

Part of the planetoid lifted, and a solid ball of red-hot matter, at least a mile thick, lifted slowly out of it. As Cemp drew aside to let the improbable thing past him, he saw that an even more unlikely phenomenon was taking place. The "up" speed of the chunk of now white-hot rock and dirt was increasing--and the mass was growing.

It was well past him, and it was at least a hundred miles in diameter. A minute later, it was five hundred miles thick, and it was still expanding, still increasing in speed.

It expanded to a burning, incredible mass.

Suddenly, it was ten thousand miles in diameter and was still going away, still growing.

Cemp sent out a general alarm: "Get away--as fast as you can. Away!"

As he himself fled, using a reversal of the gravity of the monstrous body behind him, he saw that in those few minutes it had grown more than 100,000 miles in diameter.

It was quite pink at this point--strangely, beautifully pink.

The color altered even as he watched, turning faintly yellow. And the body that emitted the beautiful ocher light was now more than 1,000,000 miles in diameter.

As big as Earth's sun.

In minutes more, it grew to the size of a giant blue sun, ten times the diameter of Sol.

It began to turn pink again, and it grew one hundred times in ten minutes. Brighter than Mira the Wonderful, bigger than glorious Ras Algethi.

But pink, not red. A deeper pink than before; not red, so definitely not a variable.

All around was the starry universe, bright with unfamiliar objects that glowed near and far--hundreds of them, strung out like a long line of jack-o'-lanterns.

Below was Earth.

Cemp looked at that scene in the heavens and then at the near, familiar planet, and an awful excitement seized him.

He thought, Is it possible that everything had to grow, that the Glis's change altered this entire area of space-time?

Old forms could not keep their suppressed state once the supercolossal pink giant completed the growth that had somehow been arrested from time's beginning.

And so the Glis was now a sun in its prime, but with eighteen hundred and twenty-three planets strung out like so many starry brilliants over the whole near sky.

Everywhere he looked were planets so close to him that they looked like moons. He made a quick, anxious calculation and realized with great relief that all those planets were still within the warming area of the monstrous sun that hung out there, half a light-year away.

As Cemp descended, at the top speed his Silkie body could withstand, into the huge atmosphere blanket that surrounded Earth, everything seemed the same--the land, the sea, the cities. ...

He swooped low over one highway and observed cars going along it.

He headed for the Silkie Authority in a haze of wonder and saw the shattered window from which he had leaped so dramatically--not yet repaired!

When, moments later, he landed among the same group of men who had been there at his departure, he realized there had been some kind of a time stasis, related to size.

For Earth and its people, that eighty days had been ... eighty seconds.

Afterwards, he would hear how people had experienced what seemed like an earthquake, tension in their bodies, momentary sensory blackout, a brief feeling that it was dark. ...

Now, as he entered, Cemp transformed to human form and said in a piercing voice, "Gentlemen, prepare for the most remarkable piece of information in the history of the universe. That pink sun out there is not the result of an atmospheric distortion.

"And, gentlemen, Earth now has eighteen hundred inhabited sister planets. Let's begin to organize for a fantastic future!"

Later, comfortably back in his Florida home, Cemp said to Joanne, "Now we can see why the Silkie problem didn't have a solution as things stood. For Earth, two thousand of us was saturation. But in this new sun system. ..."

It was no longer a question of what to do with the 6,000 members of the Silkie nation but of how they could get a hundred such groups to cope with the work to be done.

Quickly!