was empty now. Just ahead, the colony's forcefield opened a gate in itself where it swept out into the river. Boris drove through the gate, docked, gave Brenda one farewell pat, and strode toward the defense tower, which was a neglected-look-ing building near the center of the small compound. There were only a couple of dozen structures here, built of native wood and stone and glass, inhabited by fewer than three hundred people. All the Earth-descended on Kappa lived here, while automated machinery ran mines and farms and ranches for them, out in the zones of Kappa's grimmer climates, where intelligent natives were few or none. The Space Force, with its planeteers and research teams, was gone from Kappa, moved to Earthman's expanding frontier. The colonists were people who liked the life of an isolated small town, or they were not likely to remain long on Kappa. They maintained a foothold here for Earth, and made themselves comfortably prosperous. Kappa had never offered them more than incidental and occasional danger.

But now, Boris found half a dozen men, and Jane, gathered in the little room atop the defense tower. They had crowded around Morton's sentry chair and were watching his viewscreens.

Pete Kaleta, the colony's pudgy mayor, was saying, "It all looks normal at the silver mine; he went in the other direction anyway. Oh, Brazil, glad you're here."

"What's it all about?"

They looked uncertainly at one another. When no one else seemed eager to speak, Jane began, "Eddie—Mr. Jones— hardly said a word all the way back here in the boat. But he didn't seem wild or anything. Just thoughtful."

Boris asked, "So, what happened when he got here?"

Kaleta took a deep breath, and spoke, "A pair of men from a tribe just west of here arrived, right after you four had left on the picnic. They started to set up camp just outside the main gate. One of them was wearing a witch doctor's face paint, and he said he wanted to see Jones—Jones has been talking to all the witchmen. So, Morton here got Jones on the radio. Jones came back in his boat, put on a ground-suit, and walked out through the main gate."

"Put on a groundsuit?" Boris asked. "Why?"

Kaleta gestured nervously. "He didn't say. I suppose he 8 wanted to impress the natives; or maybe just to have the radio handy."

The big viewscreen in front of the sentry chair now pictured the area just outside the main gate. Bright bits of fabric, scattered boxes and primitive utensils littered the grass. In the foreground stood a native pack animal, placidly grazing. Heavy leather straps hung broken from its back; someone or something had torn the panniers from its sides and scattered the contents.

Don Morton, a powerfully-built young man, swung round in his sentry chair, and took up the story: "Jones went out there in the groundsuit. He said hello to the natives. I wasn't paying any attention to what they said. I'm not sure Jones even had his suit radio on then." Morton looked at Boris belligerently, as if expecting to be accused of something.

"All right, go on."

Morton hesitated. Jane said, "I came up here to watch. The Kappan outside was offering Eddie a drink. He poured it from a funny kind of bottle—I've never seen one just like it before. And then Eddie did radio in, and said something like: 'Hey, better have a stomach pump ready, just in case.' He didn't drink whatever it was right away. He still had his helmet on, and was standing there talking."

"Morton, I wish you'd called me," said Mayor Kaleta, staring into the viewscreen.

Morton shifted nervously in his chair. "Well, anyway, I called up the infirmary, and got Doc, here."

Doc pulled thoughtfully at a heavy mustache. "What that stuff was, I can't imagine. I wouldn't expect a small amount of any Kappan drink to have much effect on an Earthman —unless it was meant to be poison. You know, Kappans and Earth-descended are remarkably similar in their biology; I've seen experimental skin grafts made to take from one to the other. Anyway, I did get a stomach cleaner ready, just in case. Since he asked for it."

Morton took up the story again. "When I finished talking to Doc, Jones had his helmet off, and was starting to drink, from a little eup. He took a sip, and then he stood there talking for another minute. Then he tossed it all down. Then, in another minute, he and the Kappans were arguing. I was just starting to really pay attention when I guess he must

9 have shut off his radio. I don't know what the fight was about."

Morton looked at Jane. She said, "Well, I saw him step forward, shouting at the Kappans, I guess he was threatening them. They backed away from him; they looked like they were frightened and surprised."

"Jones grabbed at them," said Morton. "He knocked them down behind those bushes there. I suppose he might have killed them; you know the power in those suits. Then he tore the baskets off the pack animal, and scattered the stuff, as if he was looking for something. By that time I was already calling you, and the mayor."

Mayor Kaleta seemed much worried, but he had nothing to say for the moment.

"What land of suit did Jones put on?" Boris asked.

"Heavy ground armor," Morton answered. "We keep two suits of it ready, just in case. We've never needed it."

"Ugh." It seemed to Boris that things just might get much worse before they got any better. He decided to put on the other suit himself before going out to investigate.

Jane said, "And Eddie found the bottle, where the Kappans had put it away, all wrapped up. He took another little drink, in a hurry, and then he set the bottle down in the grass, as if it was something precious. Then he came back to the gate."

"What?"

"Oh, yes." Morton had an angry look on his face. "He radioed: 'Open up the outer gate, you fool. I need a rifle.' Well, I didn't know what the hell was going on. When he came back like that, I thought he must have some good reason. I mean, he's a planeteer, isn't he? He's supposed to know what he's doing in—strange situations. Right?"

Boris said, "Well, let's find out how strange the situation is. So you opened the outer gate, and he came in again?"

"Right. And I opened the little door to the arms room, and he went in and got an energy rifle. We keep two of them handy, like the suits. And then he trotted off without another word, heading west."

Jane added, "And he picked up the bottle and took it with him."

The silent mayor had one hand over his eyes. "I'd better get out there," said Boris. He adjourned the 10 meeting to the arms room at the main gate, where he could get himself into the remaining suit of heavy ground armor v hile the talk went on.

So, it seemed that Jones was running amok, with equipment that would make the average man as dangerous as a troop of saber-wielding cavalry. And Jones was not an average man, but a planeteer, with all the skills of the professional interstellar explorer.

Boris was a chief planeteer himself, when not on leave for rest and recreation as he was now. So it was logical for the colonists to call on him in an emergency like this one, and let him take over. Set one to catch one.

Possibly, he thought, Jones is still rational. It's just that he's discovered something that makes it right for him to manhandle a couple of natives, arm himself even further, and run off without a word of explanation. Boris couldn't imagine what such a discovery might be.

"Anything else peculiar around here lately? Unexplained?" he asked, while a couple of the colonists helped him into the armored suit.

"Things have been pretty dull," said Kaleta. "Since Magnuson disappeared," said Doc. When Boris looked at him, he amplified: "An anthropologist named Emanuel Magnuson. Used to work for the Space Force, spent most of his time out in the hills near Great Lake. He was supposed to leave when the last of the Space Force people pulled out, but he vanished. Looked like some carnivore might have gotten him."

"But you weren't sure?" Boris probed. "Could the Kap-pans have done him in?"

"We've always kept on good terms with them," said Mayor Kaleta, looking at Doc. "The Space Force seemed to be satisfied it was just animals killed him."

Doc shrugged. "Magnuson was a strange one, in some ways. He'd argue his theories. . . . How's that fit?"

"Okay, now." Boris brought an arm in from one suit sleeve and fastened his helmet from the inside. Then without further delay he headed for the outer gate. For all the suit's weight of metal, walking was easier in it than without it. Its limbs were driven by servo-mechanisms which followed the movements of the man inside, and were powered by a tiny hydrogen-fusion lamp.

As he passed the arms rack, Boris took down the remaining energy rifle, and checked the charge. Such a weapon was effective against heavy ground armor at close range. If it should ever come to that.

When the main gate shimmered open for him, Boris went out and saw the scattered Kappan goods, and the grazing phlegmatic animal. It would be nice, he thought, to find tracks showing that the two Kappans had departed the area at a speed impossible for seriously injured men, and to find Jones sleeping off his strange intoxication behind a bush. Sometimes, Boris had noticed, the world was not nice.

Kappans were a leathery-skinned people, with very wide-set eyes and bulging foreheads, grotesque by Earth standards. The first man Boris found in the bushes was quite dead, with the insects at him already. The appearance of his head suggested he had died of a blow from the power-driven arm of a groundsuit.

Boris's helmet radio brought him a collective gasp from the people in the defense tower; they were watching through the TV eye that rode on his shoulder.

"That's not the witch-doctor," someone commented.

Boris turned up his suit's sensitive air mikes and kept searching, now holding the rifle ready with the safety off. When he had moved on a few more yards, he caught the sound of ragged breathing. The second Kappan had crawled under a bush to hide. The wide-set eyes were open, and from behind oozing blood and witchman's paint they followed Boris.

"Send out a couple of stretcher bearers," he radioed. "And someone tell me a few soothing words to use."

Boris stood with two or three others beside the hospital bed in which the injured Kappan lay. While Doc was still giving the man emergency treatment, Brenda was acting as translator for Boris.

"He says, as soon as Jones had smacked his lips over the drink, he demanded to know where it came from. Jones was being initiated into the—Kappan witchdoctor's union, I guess you'd call it—so they told him the truth; it comes in trade from the western hill people, near the Great Lake. Jones demanded more of the drink; they tried to stop him from tearing up their goods, but he just knocked them aside." 12

"What was in the drink?"

The Kappan hesitated for some time before giving his short answer. Brenda glanced around at the blank faces of the others present, frowned, and translated, "He says: 'The Water of Thought.' "

"What's that mean?"

No one knew. "I've never heard of it," said Kaleta, who had just come into the infirmary. "And I've been here eight years, always in contact with the natives."

"Maybe this guy's making it up," said Morton, shaking his head at bedside.

Boris said, "Well, an Earth-size planet holds a lot of secrets. I'd be out of a job, otherwise." He drummed metal fingers on the groundsuit helmet he was now carrying under one arm. "You're all sure there was nothing in the Space Force survey reports about such a drink, or poison, or whatever?"

Everyone nodded or murmured assent. "I'm sure," said the mayor. "We practically memorized those things."

"Then maybe our pal here is lying about it. Or, it's something new."

Brenda asked. "He says its old. The Water of Thought lets a man communicate with his animal ancestors; very powerful medicine. He can tell us about it now, because we've saved his life. No one ever reacted to it the way Jones did; he says he guesses Earth-descended men are just different "

"If only I'd reminded Mr. Jones of that fact," said Doc morosely. "You people had all better clear out for a while. He needs rest."

"Two anthropologists," said Boris, thinking aloud as he walked to the door. "One vanishes near Great Lake, and the other runs toward it. It is west of here, isn't it? Or is there another Great Lake?"

The colonists gave each other the quick searching looks of people who have known one another for a long time.

"There's just one Great Lake," said the mayor finally. "I don't see any connection, though, between Magnuson and Jones."

Brenda was thoughtfully silent.

"Excellent man in his field, he was," said Morton, closing the infirmary door behind them. "Magnuson, I mean."

Time was passing, but something in the air was a little fishy.

"I've got to go after Jones," Boris said. "If any of you know anything that might help me, I'd better hear it."

Mayor Kaleta shrugged irritably. "We're telling you all we know, Brazil. No doubt you're right; someone must stop Jones, or there's no telling what he'll do, what he'll involve us in with the natives. Frankly, I'm glad you're willing to take the risk of going after him. I don't want to send a lot of untrained people, not knowing what he's up to with that suit and that rifle, or what the natives might . . ." He looked uncertainly back toward the infirmary door, behind which lay the injured Kappan.

"You're right," Boris said. "Better keep your people here inside the defenses as much as possible. I'll need a copter, though."

"Right. I'll see that one's ready." Kaleta hurried out. "I'm as good a pilot as there is around," said Brenda.

From an altitude of two thousand feet Boris could follow with binoculars the trail Jones had left, straight as a fanatic's lunge through bush and swamp and an occasional cultivated field, toward the western hills that were still fifty miles and more away.

Jones might be napping as he traveled, or unconscious, or even dead. The semi-robotic suit could be set to balance itself and walk, or even run at twenty miles an hour, holding to a course and steering itself around major obstacles. With its recycling systems and emergency rations, it could keep a man almost comfortable for a week, and functioning for a month, while he stayed sealed in.

Boris saw no signs along the trail that Jones had had more trouble with the natives. Any Kappan who saw his suited figure pace by would be likely to stay clear; he had knocked down rows of small trees that stood in his path.

"What do we do when we catch up with him?" Brenda asked coolly, sounding not at all like the girl who had been giggling in the sportboat a few hours ago.

"You set me down on his trail before then," Boris an-14 swered. "This copter makes too good a target for that rifle of his, even at this altitude."

"You think he'd shoot us down?"

"We'd better think so." Boris watched Brenda's profile. Something about the colonists' behavior still bothered him, and he shot a sudden question, "What was this Emanuel Magnuson like? The other man who vanished."

Her eyes, watching the terrain and air ahead, clouded briefly. "I think he was a fine man. He was nice to me and to Jane—oh, in a fatherly sort of way, though he's not really old. But there's something so—intense about him."

"You speak as if he might be still alive."

"Well, I get the impression, sometimes—I don't know."

"Tell me."

"It's like a feeling in the air, around the colony that Dr. Magnuson didn't just die in a simple accident. I don't recall anything definite ever being said. Do you know what a small town's like? Or maybe we're unique."

"It puzzles me a little why you stay here, gal."

"Oh. My parents died here; I've just stayed on. All the people are my family and friends. Jane and I are the two orphans; maybe we're spoiled." She glanced over at Boris. "Sometimes I—we—get restless. We took a trip out once—"

Business came first, and Boris interrupted, "Better start down now; I don't think he can be more than three or four miles ahead. See that second meadow up there? Aim for it, but when you get halfway there peel off to the right. We'll take a little evasive action, just to be safe."

Suddenly the accustomed drone of the copter's engine was gone; in the heavy silence Boris looked overhead to see the jet-spun rotor idling to a halt. In his stomach he felt the familiar start of free-fall. His hand moved instinctively for the copter's controls, but Brenda's fingers were already there, doing the proper things.

But to no avail. The engine was dead; Jones must have hit it with a jolt from his energy rifle. The copter tilted forward, and forest replaced sky in front of Boris, trees coming closer in a long hard rush. The machine was not dropping quite like a rock, but you could hardly call it a glide.

"Bail out!" Boris yelled at Brenda. He reached to take what control was left out of her hands. "I've got the suit!"

Her fingers were already tightening the parachute straps

over her coverall, but she hesitated momentarily, her wide brown eyes looking into his, perhaps to see if he was being gallantly self-sacrificing. A cool one, this girl. Then, with her chute ready, she popped open the cabin door and leaped out, just as Boris was ready to shove her.

With his metal arms, he fought the controls until the steering column bent. And the trees were upon him.

Bounce and bang. Bounce again, and smash. He held his arms in front of his faceplate, until he had shocked and jolted to a halt. Blessed be heavy ground armor!

Boris's seat belt was holding him, upside down, among splintered branches. The copter was a mass of torn metal around him; it would never fly again. The afternoon sun shone through a fine haze of leaves and sawdust, still drifting and settling.

Taking inventory of his sensations, Boris found nothing worse than a couple of bruises; so he began to break his way out of the wreckage. It had been a frustrating day up to now, and there was a certain satisfaction in bashing obstructions aside. When the way was clear, he dropped with a clanging thud to the ground. He retrieved his rifle, and saw with relief that it was undamaged—Jones might be coming around for another shot.

After getting his directions from the sun, Boris moved off through the thin forest at a fast lope, toward the area where Brenda should have come down. In a few minutes he spotted the bright cloth of her parachute spread on the ground.

"Boris!" Her voice came from above him. She sat twelve feet high in a tree, clasping the trunk. Her face was pale. "My ankle's hurt," she said. "No, I'm all right, really; I climbed up here. I thought I might see where you came down."

"Well." Boris allowed himself a grin. "Your knight in shining alloy is here now. Looks like we're in pretty good shape; with this suit I can carry you back to the colony in five or six hours. Of course if I have to wear the suit I won't enjoy the task nearly so much."

"What about Mr. Jones?" she asked.

What a girl. "Just let me check his trail; I'll be back in about five minutes. He can keep running west all night if he wants to; but I want to make sure he's not lurking around here to take another shot at us. Suppose you come down from 16

that tree and hide in a bush, and I'll call your name when I get back. My suit's number Two—see? Jones has number One on, I guess."

"Okay, go ahead. Ill be all right." Brenda started down from the tree.

There seemed little point in trying to tell her what to do if he didn't come back, so without further delay he moved out through the woods, going as quietly as possible in his bulk of metal. For a minute he waited, just out of Brenda's view, watching to see if Jones appeared near her. Jones might have seen the chute come down.

Jones did not materialize, so Boris moved on. Where he expected Jones's trail, he found it—a line of brush and saplings trampled down and bent toward the west. Boris followed the trail for a hundred yards, and noticed hopefully that it began to waver. Soon it looped around as if the man making it was no longer certain of his directions.

And then Boris saw a silver gleam ahead—Jones's suit, fallen on its faceplate in low grass. Boris let out a little sigh of relief, and moved forward, watching alertly—

"I've got a rifle on you, Brazil," said a voice behind him. "Freeze in your tracks."

There seemed to be little future in any other course.

"Now drop the rifle and take off your helmet."

He did.

After a moment Jones came walking around to face him, well out of reach but easily close enough for the energy rifle he held to puncture Boris's armor. And the weapon stayed center-aimed at Boris.

Jones was as tall as Boris, and heavier. He sported a short black beard; more dark hair grew thickly on his bare massive forearms, and from the throat of his coveralls. He looked happy.

"Well, what's the matter, Jones?" Boris asked. "I'd like to hear your side of this." He made his voice a trifle loud, for Brenda might by now have decided to follow him.

Jones showed white teeth, and looked Boris's suit up and down with an expert eye. "No sidearms, eh? Fine. Sit down against that tree over there and I'll tell you my side, as you put it. I'll kill you, if need be, but I don't want to kill you. I've thought of a much better way."

"That's good to hear," said Boris, sitting down as directed.

Then he nodded toward Jones's fallen armor. "Neat ambush."

Jones ignored the compliment. "Brazil, I've tasted the Water of Thought—that's what the witchman said they call it. And I've come to know—" Jones paused, then gave a little shake of his head. "There's no use my trying to explain. I wouldn't have believed anyone who'd tried to tell me. You'll have to taste it yourself before you'll understand." He walked to the fallen groundsuit, and from somewhere inside it he brought out what could only be the medicine man's bottle.

"Maybe I can understand," said Boris smoothly. "I'd like to try. You tore up those people's property back there, and ran off, just to find more of this Water of Thought?"

"I did more than that. I killed someone, didn't I?"

"One of them."

"Ah. But I had to, they were keeping me from the Water. You'll see, when you taste it. Nothing could mean more to me now than it does, not food, or relief from pain, or women, or anything else. I sound like a madman, don't I? You'll see how it is." Jones put a hand to his forehead. His face and eyes looked as if he might be developing a fever.

Boris thought rapidly. "Jones, do you have a family?" Had something shown of the guilty married man when Jones during the morning's picnic put an arm around Jane? How long ago the morning and the picnic were.

"Never mind my family!" For the first time, Jones showed a hint of inner conflict. "I won't see them now for a long time. Maybe I'll never see them again. How can I, when the Water of Thought is here on Kappa?"

"All right, so you want more of this Water of Thought. Most likely it'll take a large expedition to find where the stuff comes from."

"Oh, no, Brazil." Jones chuckled. "No. You're not sweet-talking me back to the colony. They'd just stick me in the infirmary, and wouldn't give me any more Thought-Water if they had any, which they don't. Right now, the only way I can get along with another Earthman is to convert him to my way of thinking." Jones held up his stone bottle. "You will be my first disciple."

Keep him talking, thought Boris. Maybe the stuff will wear off. "Jones, are you religious?"

Jones accepted the question as relevant. "You know I wasn't." 18

"And now you are? I don't understand."

"You will." Still keeping the rifle ready, Jones used his teeth to loosen the carved top of the bottle. Removed, the cap made a little drinking cup. He set down the cup and very carefully poured it half full of clear liquid from the bottle.

"This is God, Brazil. That's what I mean. God's in my little bottle here." It was only with great evident effort that Jones was able to keep himself from drinking the contents of the cup. But he set it gently on the ground, and backed away, holding the bottle and the rifle. "Now drink that!" he ordered. "Move forward slowly, and drink it."

"If I take any, there'll be less for you."

Jones bit his lip. "It's an investment, to get more. That's the only reason I can stand to give it away. With two of us, in ground armor, working together, the Kappans will never be able to keep us from getting at the source of the Water; one man alone can always be tricked or trapped somehow. Now drink! I'm in a hurry. If I must, I'll kill you and go on alone."

Boris stood up and walked slowly forward; he had heard the threat of murder in voices before. But experience gave no protection against the cutting edge of fear.

"Let me just walk away, Jones," he said loudly. "Even without my groundsuit, I could just walk back to the colony." Maybe Brenda was listening, wondering what to do and would accept the hint. He added more quietly, "It would take me a couple of days, and you'd get away."

Jones just moved the rifle muzzle slightly, motioning toward the cup. It would be plain suicide to try to rush Jones. Swallowing the Water of Thought might be suicide of a different kind, but it seemed that if Boris drank he would at least keep on breathing, and there was always hope while breath lasted. In three or four days the cruiser Boris had expected to ride home to Sol would make planetfall on Kappa; it would have the men and equipment for a massive search.

Boris decided to risk one last argument. "Jones—"

"One more stalling word and you're dead."

Boris bent down, reaching for the cup. He noticed that his fingers were still steady. As if that meant anything.

"Brazil, if you spill even one drop, I'll take time to kill you slowly, before I go on."

Jones resumed his westward march, and Boris, by his order, walked beside him. I am a semi-robotic man, Boris thought, walking inside a semi-robotic suit. That makes one whole robot, plus a little extra machinery. Plus a little something else, all that is left of me. Or might the little something else be an illusion?

Darkness found them on the first steep slope of the western hills, and there Jones called a halt. Ahead of them lay a hundred thousand square miles of rough forest-covered country, almost completely unexplored.

"There'll be more copters looking for me, sooner or later," said Jones, turning his faceplate up to the first stars of the Kappan night. "So we'll light no fire. And we'll take turns standing watch, just in case. Wake me in about two hours, or sooner if you see anything I'd want to know about."

So Jones lay down to sleep; and Boris found himself unable to do anything but stand guard against his possible rescuers. How long could his slavery last? Surely any drug would wear off in time.

But two hours passed, and he awakened Jones. Then Boris drifted off into a daze of sickly dreams, in which he had to fight with a child's thin arms against an overwhelming faceless Something-Jones was shaking his suit to awaken him. It was dawn and Jones had watched for more than two hours. Fifty or sixty feet away a figure stood, motionless, partly hidden by mist.

It's a man, was Boris's first thought. It's a short Kappan savage without clothes. It was less than five feet tall, male, with grayish leathery skin and a heavy growth of dark hair at ciotch and armpits, on the forearms and lower legs.

Standing up slowly, open hands spread out, Jones made the planeteer's gesture for greeting primitive people. With a bobbing, somehow apelike motion of its upper body, the figure half-turned away from Boris and Jones. Its arms were muscular, but short, not apelike. It hesitated, as if on the verge of flight, looking back over a shoulder at the two men. Boris imagined he saw intelligence in the pale eyes, and then imagined he saw the lack of it. Jones gestured again, and the creature turned and sped away into the mist, running easily like a man.

"So," said Jones, as if not greatly surprised. "The Kappan hominid does exist. It was carrying something in one hand." 22

"Yes, I believe it had a rock." So might Earth's first tool-maker have looked, thought Boris, a million years ago. "It was pre-human, then?"

"Can't say, for sure." Briefly Jones was a planeteer again. "The survey missed them completely. Only in the last couple of years a few stories have leaked out of these hills. Other Kappans live around here, too. They call the hominids the Forest People."

"Our survey missed a whole tribe? Or maybe even a species?"

Jones took off his helmet and rubbed his neck. "I'd say they're a separate species; from what little I've heard I don't think they're men. Sloppy work, sure. But look at this country around here; you can see how survey crews would miss a lot. High-crowned tropical forest. No way to see under it, really."

"That's right."

Jones surveyed the morning sky again. "Treesll help to hide us—we'll need that." He picked up his rifle and adjusted the vernier for a fine beam. "Think 111 try to get us some meat for breakfast. Why don't you start a little fire?"

Boris began to look for wood. "That was a neat shot you made yesterday."

Jones looked at him blankly. "What?"

"Hitting my copter."

Jones blinked. "I never saw your copter after it started down. Didn't you just land it?"

Ill

Brenda was awakened by the sound of a copters engine. She had dozed off in spite of everything after tying herself into a tree a dozen feet above the ground. Now the sun was up, burning away a low ground mist. The sky was clear.

The copter was circling slowly, a few hundred feet above her head. From the branches of her tree she had hung the bright cloth of her parachute, making a marker visible for miles.

Brenda waved; the copter circled once more, and then started down to land a little distance away where the trees were thinner. Brenda unknotted the belt with which she

had secured herself to the tree, and climbed down. Pain stabbed her right ankle, and now she could hardly stand on it. She remained where she was, clinging to the tree trunk, until she saw Kaleta coming toward her from the landed copter. He was carrying a machine pistol, and looking around him warily.

"Mayor Petel Am I glad to see you!"

Something was wrong with the way he looked at her. "Where's Brazil?" he asked.

"He went on after Jones, yesterday before dark. He said he'd be back in five minutes, but he never came. I couldn't look for him—my ankle's hurt. Something's happened to him, we've got to get more people out here and start searching, right away."

"Hm. We've got to find him, all right. Can't you walk? Here, lean on me." They started to the copter.

"I'm sorry, Brenda," the mayor said, watching her limp. "I didn't intend—well, now you're in this, I suppose. There's nothing to be done about it."

"What's up?" Don Morton demanded, leaning from the pilot's seat of the copter. Jane sat beside him, looking small and frightened.

"Brazil's gone west, I guess," said Kaleta, motioning in that direction with his gun. "After Jones, or with him."

"I don't like it." Shutting off the copter's engine, Morton hopped out. "Why couldn't we have had a couple of more energy rifles?" he complained, as if to himself. He slapped his own holstered pistol. "I don't know about these things— against one of those suits."

"Are you going to call for help?" Brenda demanded.

"No," said Morton. "Shut up and get in the back seat."

Brenda had seen Don Morton in ugly moods before, but this was the worst. She kept quiet for the moment, and climbed up into the rear of the copter. Jane helped her up, and came to sit beside her, while the men talked to each other in low urgent voices.

"What's going on?" Brenda whispered.

Jane was near tears. "Oh, Brenda, honey, I'm sorry. I knew Don and Mayor Pete were up to something. I guess I knew it was smuggling. But I didn't know that business yesterday had any connection with it. And there I was, telling everyone 24 just what Eddie did outside the gate before Don could hush me up. I thought he was going to kill me, later." "Smuggling? What?"

"That—damned drink. It's some kind of drug . . ." Jane bowed her face into her hands.

Right now, to Brenda, the important thing was that Boris still needed help; she would not let herself believe him dead. Intending to call the colony herself, she reached forward to the copter's radio—found that all power was off.

"Please, Mayor Petel Don!"

The mayor would not meet her eye. Don Morton held up the copter's power key, showing her he had it; his smile was ugly indeed. "Just behave," he said. "The good mayor and I will do our own searching."

"You're not drinking much from your bottle," Boris commented, when he and Jones were on their way again, striding up a long slope through open forest. After a breakfast of roast meat Jones had taken a single swallow of the Water of Thought; he had otherwise been content with the ordinary water in his suit's canteen tank.

"I know something about drug addiction." Jones smiled faindy, behind his faceplate. "This is something different from any addiction I've ever heard of. In fact, I'm not an addict, in the sense that I don't suffer physically if I don't drink the Water. No, the effect seems almost purely—mental. I can't describe it. I don't think any doctor could—or any poet. All I know is that nothing else will matter to me, for the rest of my life."

"How did you come to take the first drink?" Boris asked, and felt the ghost of humor at sounding like someone interviewing an old alcoholic.

"Why, I wanted to get in good with the witchmen." Jones laughed, without humor. "I told you I know something about drug addiction. I'm here on Kappa for Space Force intelligence. The crime syndicate's taken an interest in this planet lately, and we've wondered what the attraction was. Some kind of exotic dope seemed a good bet, but I swallowed the stuff myself before I suspected that I'd found it. All I really wanted from the witchmen was information about the tribes in these hills, and to try to get a line on Magnuson. He's in-

volved somehow. Nobody ever really believed that the wolves got him."

"He worked for the Space Force, didn't he?"

"Yes. Towards the end he spent most of his time arguing with his boss. It seems he wanted to make anthropology an experimental science. He had theories about reinforcing natural selection, and weeding out the unfit. Of course the Tribunes wouldn't let him test any scheme like that on a Kappan tribe."

"So you think he went into hiding here? To work in secret?"

"That's what SFI thought. Now, I think he might have tasted the same thing you and I have." Jones looked at Boris. "It hit you one way and me another. There's no telling what it might have done to him."

In the afternoon Boris and Jones passed four Kappans, who stood in a group at some distance, watching them. These were not hominids, but tall spear-carrying warriors who resembled the men of the tribes nearer the colony. Jones waved at them but when he got no reply he made no move to approach them.

"They don't seem too much surprised by our suits," observed Jones thoughtfully. "They've had some contact with Earthmen. Maybe Magnuson."

"So, what do you do now?"

"We just walk on some more. Let ourselves be seen."

At sunset, Boris and Jones dined again on fresh-killed meat. And again Boris was left to stand the first watch.

Boris had not asked a second time for his freedom. It was not something to be given him, it was something he would take when he was able.

He would try now, with all the will that he could muster. Jones slept. Boris picked up a rifle. Experimentally, he tried to aim the weapon at Jones, and found that he could not. There was no struggle with himself; his hands and arms simply refused to make the required motions.

He threw the rifle down, and looked up through the tree-tops at the stars. Killing Jones, or threatening him, was not the answer anyway. The trouble was inside himself.

Boris faced in the proper direction, drew a deep breath, and willed himself to walk quietly away, back toward the 26 colony. But his feet would not move. After a long time he sat down.

Again Jones's shaking awakened Boris to a cool and misty dawn. What had looked in the evening twilight like another valley, he now saw to be a lake, at least two or three miles in diameter. Much of its surface and shoreline was obscured by the morning haze.

Eight Kappan men, armed with spears and wearing loincloths, stood about twenty yards off, watching stolidly, not much impressed by groundsuits.

Seeing that Boris was awake, Jones slowly stood up, making the peace gesture. Boris imitated him, willingly. He welcomed the natives, on the theory that any random change in his predicament was likely to be for the better.

Some of the Kappans imitated the peace gesture. Then the tallest one stepped forward, and spoke in the language of Earth's colonies and Space Force: '

"You men of Earth, why do you walk here?" His voice was accented but quite plain.

Jones answered, "We are looking for a man named Mag-nuson. We are the enemies of his enemies, so we would be his friends."

The tall warrior raised his arm as in a wave to someone on a distant hill. Then he said, "Wait. Magnuson is not far. If you try to use your far-speakers, he will hear them, and then you will not find him."

"We will wait," said Jones. He turned to Boris. "If Magnuson has radio equipment out here, that means he's getting help."

Boris came to a decision. "Jones, I don't think you're my worst enemy on this planet. I'd better tell you something. You know accidental failure of a copter is very unlikely. If you didn't shoot at mine, someone probably sabotaged it."

"So. Probably our smuggler didn't want you to catch me. Wants us both out of the way. Who do you think it was?"

"Probably the mayor. Another thing—Brenda was with me in the copter, and she had to parachute. She's back there somewhere with a twisted ankle."

Jones turned away. "What's all that to me, now?" he asked. "If my own family means nothing, what do you suppose Brenda means?"

Beside him, Jones jumped up shouting, "Our suits! Bring them back!"

But Magnuson simply got up and walked away, not showing any great excitement. The copter's sound slowed and died abruptly in the darkness as if the machine had made a radar landing nearby. In a few minutes Magnuson was back, and Boris was not astonished to see that Pete Kaleta walked with him. Don Morton and Jane were more of a surprise; and then, stopping Boris's heart for a second, Brenda walked into the firelight, her hands behind her as if they were tied. She limped badly, but seemed otherwise unhurt. The relief in her eyes when they discovered him tore at the raw wound of his helplessness.

Kaleta stopped in front of him. "I meant you no harm, Brazil. Or her. I didn't expect your copter would fail that suddenly. I'm no expert at sabotage."

"No one's meant me any harm yet on this planet," said Boris. "How far behind you is the Space Force?"

"I meant I didn't want to kill you." The mayor stared thoughtfully at Boris; the stare was all the worse in that it did not seem intended to frighten.

Magnuson suddenly noticed Brenda's bound hands. He yanked a knife from a sheath at his belt and cut her free. "There's no need for this damnable business!" He hurled pieces of cord away.

"Who said you could—" Morton's move toward Magnuson was stopped by Red Circles' spear leveled at his chest. Morton stepped back, his hand going to the holster at his side.

"No!" Kaleta grabbed at Morton. "Take it easy. We can't afford— Take it easy, will you? We'll talk this over later."

"Go ahead, tough guy," said Jane to Morton. "Get us all killed."

With a little shudder she moved away from him, toward the table. "I see supper's ready. Are we all invited?"

"You are indeed," said Magnuson. He looked big, standing protectively beside little Brenda. Beside him she looked very young, rubbing her freed hands, her brown hair hanging loose around her face.

"Thank you," she said to Magnuson. Then she looked across the table at Boris. "Are you all right? Our mayor came and rescued me this morning, as you see." 34

"I'm alive; I'm drugged," Boris told her. Brenda's eyes went wide.

Magnuson sheathed his knife. "Let's all have something to eat," he said, calmly. "Then we can talk."

While eating, Boris kept a planeteer's eye turned on the Kappans. None of them were sharing Magnuson's table tonight, yet Boris thought they might at the next meal. Their relationship with Magnuson seemed to be a complex one. The robed priests deferred to him, the warriors defended him, and the kilted workers served him. Yet he had said they would not tell him the secret of the source of the Water of Thought; not that he seemed much interested in it. Such a relationship might be possible only between people of different planets.

From across the table, Brenda was appealing silently to Boris for some reassurance if not help. He found himself resenting the way she looked at him. He wanted to scream at her that he was helpless, that there was nothing he could do for her whatever happened. But he kept his face calm; that was all he could do.

Jane was a frightened girl and showed it, looking from one face to another for some sign of hope.

Kaleta and Jones and Morton were all dining in poker-faced silence.

Even now, relaxed, Magnuson had the bearing of a chief. He ate sparingly, though with evident enjoyment. At last he wiped greasy fingers on a cloth handed to him by a kilted worker-girl, and belched with healthy satisfaction. The worker-chef smiled at this sign of approval.

"On Kappa," Magnuson began, "Eden is here and now."

At Boris's side, Jones raised his head. He turned his face, with an odd expression, down the table toward Magnuson.

Magnuson gestured at the villagers nearby. "Oh, for these people, and for the rest of their species scattered around the planet, Eden of course has passed. But, for some creatures in the wilderness near here, its time is now."

The Kappan night was deep around the torch-lit table, and the night insects had awakened. Jane giggled in nervousness, and Morton ostentatiously yawned.

Magnuson looked at Jones. "I told you that something more than our individual lives is at stake here. We find ourselves privileged to aid the forces that created us, to become

the conscious, willing tools of evolution. I mean that the Kap-pan hominid is on the verge of becoming man, and chance has given us the opportunity to help."

Red Circles had been leaning on his spear, a few yards from the table. Now he stirred restlessly.

Magnuson looked over him, as if accepting a challenge implied by the movement. "What are the Forest People, Red Circles? Are they men?"

"They are enemies or slaves, Magnuson."

"But when some of them become men, full men like you and me, what then?"

"Magnuson you know they are our enemies. I have seen you torture them, and it was good. Now these others from Earth will help us kill the grown Forest People and make the young ones slaves. And we will hide all of you, when your enemies come flying to find you. All this will be good."

Magnuson sighed with weary impatience. "Red Circles, I do not mean to kill the Forest People or to make them slaves, and you well know it. You have learned new speech from me, with great skill. Can you not learn more? When the Forest People have become full men, like you and me, it will be wrong to kill them or keep them at work by whipping them."

"Yes," said Red Circles calmly, not arguing. But not giving way either, thought Boris.

Magnuson looked round at his fellow Earth-descended. "How many men and women, do you think, upon how many planets, have lived out the lives of baboons, among groups of less-than-men? How many with the spark of humanity in them have spent their days and years grubbing for insects beside their animal fathers and brothers? I tell you it is happening here and now on Kappa.

"Tomorrow we all go up the river to the Workers' Village. The chiefs have decided that a new temple is to be built, and the stone quarry up there is busy. You will see the hominid used in the quarry. They are beasts of burden, but among those beasts I fear that there are slaves."

"Helping the poor slaves is all very fine," said Pete Kaleta to Magnuson. "But you know what we want."

"I sent you some of the Water of Thought," said Magnuson shortly. "I've paid you for the radio and the other things you sent me. For your silence about me. As if you didn't want silence." 36

"Yes, you gave us a little of the stuff, just a sample. Well, the people in the Outfit want more. I understand they like something with a real kick to it. Don't look so disgusted. You knew who we were doing business with. Now I swear to you, Magnuson, I mean to deliver the stuff we've contracted for." Kaleta looked around; Red Circles had walked away, and no other Kappan was listening. "That's going to mean a lot of Thought-Water. We'll give you a share of the profits. You can spend it working with these hominids, if that's what you live for. But understand you're going to help us deliver the Thought-Water."

Magnuson looked at Kaleta and Morton as if they were filth on his supper table. Then he turned to Jones and Boris. "Gentlemen, I have quarreled with the Space Force. Daily I violate its somewhat narrow-minded rules governing anthropological research; but I still respect it and I respect you. When I see such as these . . ."

"Don't get tough." Morton's voice was cold. Then he smiled over at Jones. "I understand you'll make a good customer for the Water from now on. Stick with us, and we'll see you're taken care of."

Jones stared back. Then he put his face down in his hands on the table.

In the small hut where he and Boris were quartered for the night, Jones poured himself a sip of the Water of Thought. Then he sat silently clutching his stone bottle, which seemed nearly empty.

"You look sick," said Boris.

"I am. Magnuson hasn't given me any more of the stuff yet. It may be killing me, but I don't mind if it does. If only I wouldn't imagine strange things." Jones stretched out on a sleeping mat, still holding the bottle tightly.

"What sort of things?"

Jones did not answer. After a little while he seemed to sleep.

Boris sat cross-legged in the little hut's open doorway, looking out at the fire-spotted village night. He wondered where the groundsuit and rifles were being kept. Not that the knowledge was likely to do him much good. Against a nearby tree there leaned a warrior with a spear, visible in silhouette, probably watching Boris.

might get rich and get away from this planet and not have dope-peddling on your conscience—or murder. But in your heart you know the Space Force is bound to uncover all this sooner or later, because so many people are involved. And when that time comes you'd like me as your friend."

She put her hand on his arm again. "Ill do what I can for you. Yes, for Brenda too. But I can't do much." Jane raised one finger, to trace the line of his jaw. "You know, I could wish you were under my control, not Eddie's. But Don will be coming back. I'd better go; good-night."

When Boris was almost back at the door of his own hut, he realized that a man was standing motionless in the shadows beside it. It was Magnuson.

When Boris stopped, the doctor took a step forward, cleared his throat, and said self-consciously, "I order you to stand on your head."

"What?" Boris almost giggled with the sudden relief of apparent silliness. Then he understood. "Oh, a test. No, Doctor, I don't have to obey your orders. Only Jones's."

"Good. Then you will not obey Morton or Kaleta. Will you step into the hut?"

Inside, three warriors held Jones. His arms were bound, and there was a flint knife at his throat.

"Jones controls you, and now, as you see, I control Jones." Magnuson was not boasting; he was miserable. "Oh, this is all horrible. But I must remain in control, and there is no other way for me to do it."

Jones spoke without moving his head. "Brazil, he wants you to get into a groundsuit and disarm Morton and Kaleta. Wait until they finish with the radio and come back to the village. Shouldn't be too hard a job."

"It should be a pleasure." Boris looked from Jones to Magnuson. "You don't need to compel me to do that—just give me permission."

"I hate to use you as a slave." Magnuson was suffering. "But I have done worse things. I know you'd escape me in a moment if you could. Perhaps you'd kill me. I must control you in the groundsuit and get you out of it again. I hope that soon I can convince you that I do the work of Man. But . . ."

There came a muffled clanking at the door of the hut. Red 40

Circles and three others bore a groundsuit in, carrying it across bending spears.

Jones gave precise orders. "Brazil, put the groundsuit on. Disarm Kaleta and Morton, but don't hurt them if you can help it. Then come at once back to this hut and take off the suit." He glanced at Magnuson, who nodded. The flint knife was taken from Jones's throat, but not any great distance.

"I think I will be the one to take the weapons from the two Earthmen," said Red Circles.

"No." Magnuson looked steadily at the war chief. "They will be on their guard, and you might have to kill them, especially if you went alone against them."

Muscles bunched along Red Circles' jaw. "Magnuson does not say that I might fail."

"I know you better than that. But as bad as they are, I do not want the two Earthmen killed. I mean to give them the chance to prove themselves true men."

Red Circles seemed to understand, if not agree.

Magnuson stared briefly off into space, fascinated by something only he could see. "Like a baptism," he mused. "It might wash away past sins."

Boris, getting into the suit, thought he understood. Magnuson had said that all of the Earthmen present would become members of this tribe. Then the "baptism" he talked of would be an initiation ceremony.

"There may be some shooting," Boris said to Magnuson. "Better see that the village people keep their heads down."

"Yes, that's right." Magnuson hurried out of the hut.

"One thing," said Boris to Jones.

"What?" Jones opened his eyes. He had seemed to be resting, almost oblivious of the Kappans who were still ready to kill him at a moment's notice.

"Let me make sure Brenda's safe."

"I'll have them bring her over here so you can see she's healthy—when you come back here and get out of that suit."

And that had to suffice; Boris went out of the hut. Outside, he met Magnuson and strode beside him across the village common, wrapped now in the familiar fluid power of a groundsuit but as helpless as ever.

"They'll come back to the village along that path," Mag-

nuson whispered to him, pointing in the starlight. "The copter is in a clearing over there. Remember, no bloodshed." "I want none."

"Of course. Good luck." Magnuson moved silently away.

I don't need it now, thought Boris, watching the greater darkness of the path where it emerged from the forest. He would need all the luck he could get, later, when he tried to resist his orders, when he tried to keep the suit on and pick up Brenda and carry her out of this mess.

A flashlight appeared, far down the path. Moving expertly in the bulky suit, Boris took shelter behind some bushes. He turned up the sensitivity of his helmet's microphones, and picked up a low murmur of voices.

"—anything fatal to Brenda, at least not right away. That'd be a terrible waste." Don Morton chuckled.

"Let's get the business settled." Kaleta sounded angry. "We'll be lucky to manage that, without playing around."

"All right, ail right. Anyone who's dead or missing can be blamed on Jones, when there's an investigation."

"If we can get the Kappans on our side. But we go along with Magnuson until we find out where this Thought-Water comes from."

They were very close to Boris now, and evidently caught the gleam of his suit in the bushes. The flashlight in Morton's hand swung suddenly to shine straight on him.

"Who?" Kaleta demanded sharply.

"Me," said Boris, and plunged after Morton, who had turned and was running back along the path toward the copter. Morton heard the metal footfalls closing in, turned, and fired. Bullets whanged off the armored suit before Boris got a grip on the barrel of the machine pistol, yanked it from Morton's grasp, and flattened it into uselessness.

"Come along." With compelled gentleness, Boris took Morton's arm and towed him back toward the village. Morton made choking sounds, of rage or fear or both, but offered no more resistance.

The good mayor had been smart enough to raise his hands and stand still. Boris plucked Kaleta's firearm from its holster, and squeezed it into junk. Then, gripping one man's arm lightly in each metal gauntlet, Boris marched his prisoners back across the village common. 42

Magnuson met them, an escort of warriors at his back. His face showed relief. The two girls stood beside him.

"I'm all right, Boris," Brenda called to him. There was hope in her eyes again.

Nothing would be easier, now, than to rage through them all, knocking them aside until he had Brenda safe in his metal arms; then, to run with her, spears bouncing from his back, trees crashing under his feet, carrying her safe through the night to the sheltering forcefield walls of the colony.

. . . Boris began to remove his helmet, and then his suit. He could not even try to disobey.

In the mobning, again transmitting his orders through Jones, Magnuson had Boris again put on a groundsuit, and then drag the other one to the river and throw it in, together with the energy rifles.

"We are going upstream," Magnuson announced, when the rest of his prisoners had been assembled. "A couple of miles north of here, at the Workers' Village, there are some things I want all of you to see. Probably we will stay there tonight, and tomorrow go upstream again, another mile or two to the Warriors' Village. And there we will see, all of us, whether we are acceptable to the spirit of man."

"You're out of your head," said Morton.

"I know you think so, now. But come."

Magnuson led the march upstream, with Red Circles and an elaborately robed chief priest at his sides. Boris, still wearing the groundsuit, followed, with Brenda and Jane. Then, sullenly silent, came Kaleta and Morton. After a few more priests, a band of warriors brought up the rear, with Jones secured among them, gagged so he could shout no sudden orders to Boris.

The path between villages was a well-worn trail but steep in places and fairly difficult. It zigzagged uphill among boulders and under overshadowing trees, and skirted rapids and falls. Boris helped the girls over the rougher places. He found he could hardly speak to Brenda. Her eyes were sympathetic, not accusing—but still it was harder and harder for him to meet them with his own.

ing to push stones. The kilted men with whips barked their orders in repeated monosyllables, as if to horses.

If these beasts were the once-human product of some brainwasher's art, the the most evil men of the galaxy might learn new skills on Kappa. But no, thought Boris. These two-legged beasts have never been men.

Jane had turned her face from the sight. But Brenda watched, and Boris saw that there were tears in her eyes.

"It is not as simple as it seems," said Magnuson to her gently. "If they had the bodies of horses, and you saw them given food and water and rest, you would not weep for them. They are given those things."

"But they're not horses," said Brenda.

"Weep for those who are not. That's the point, yes. One in three, or one in ten, must bear in his brain the spark of humanity, and that spark has never been fanned."

"Why do you say they must?" Kaleta asked.

"Well, they can hardly be anywhere else on the evolutionary tree. In the wild state they use weapons—to fight the villagers and no doubt in hunting. I'm no biologist, but their brain capacity seems adequate for abstract thought. Apes will now and then use tools, but their brains are smaller, and their forelimbs are needed primarily for travel, whether brachiating or walking. Only man and his immediate ancestors habitually stand erect. Come this way. I'll show you my laboratory."

Magnuson led his party away from the quarry, along a narrow path that curved through the woods for a hundred yards and came to an end at a big, new-looking cabin. At one end of the building was a pen of upright logs, like a prison stockade.

In the stockade were eight hominids. The one female and one of the males looked old and completely crippled, obviously unable to haul stone in the quarry. The remaining six were younger males, all more or less healthy-looking, though one of them was minus a hand. Looking at the six more carefully, Boris saw that each of them bore the scar of some serious but now healed injury. Probably primitive ropes broke often in the quarry, and heavy stones slipped and slid and fell.

A water trough ran into the pen. "Dry again," sighed Magnuson. He took up a pail, and began to fill the trough from 46 a nearby well. "I can't get the villagers to feed or water a hominid that does no work. They give me the ones that are badly injured in quarry accidents, and first aid and Earth drugs save some of them, as you see. Red Circles will not understand that my treatments are not meant as torture. There. You were all thirsty, weren't you?"

Inside the pen, the hominids clustered along the trough, cupping up water in their hands, or bending over to slurp noisily. The one-handed male drank, then turned and reached out between the logs of the palisade toward Magnuson. Magnuson touched the gray leathery hand, as if knowing that was all the creature wanted.

"Have they any speech?" Jones asked, staring with an odd expression at the hominids.

"No. Oh, the villagers say that the wild adults have a language of their own, but I doubt that it's more than a system of warning cries such as monkeys use. Though I've never gotten close to a wild adult myself."

"But they must have speech. Don't they? I can remember—" Jones stopped speaking, abruptly. He stared at the hominids as if they frightened him; they were paying him no attention.

Magnuson shook his head, watching Jones carefully. "No, they have no speech. The young ones are captured when they wander away from the wild troop, brought here and trained like horses or dogs. I've tried to teach these a few words, but I think none of them are psychically ready for symbolic thought. So I mean for the six young males to go with us, tomorrow night, into the rite of passage."

Boris was not surprised, having followed Magnuson's thought this far. He tried to picture members of three intelligent species being initiated into the same primitive tribe—he didn't yet know what the initiation would be like, but he could imagine it. Still, he refrained for the moment from arguing.

Jones was surprised. He asked, "Will the villagers stand for it?"

Magnuson nodded. "Just barely. Oh, perhaps all six of these will die in the ordeal, for no mere animal can pass through alive. But in pain and shock is man bom, as an individual or as a race. If the ordeal awakens none of these six to manhood, why I must try again; I must somehow get time

to try again. In the end I must succeed. Then I shall have made man, and what civilization does to me will not matter."

Morton laughed. "You'll play hell starting a tribe with those. Six males."

Magnuson was unruffled. "The female is not so important." He bowed, smiling, to the girls. "Until civilization is attained. And even then a psychic difference remains between the sexes, which we ignore to our cost. Civilization abandons the rite of passage, and enfeebles the race. Eventually we must return on our home planet to the ordeal, to the weeding-out. Only males who can prove their manhood should survive and reproduce."

Magnuson's Earth-descended audience was silent, angry or fearful, some of them half-believing him. Magnuson ignored them. The one-armed hominid still stood at the palisade, thrusting his hand and stump out between the logs. Magnuson touched the gray hand again.

After feeding his hominids, throwing leaves and roots from a bin into the pen, he beckoned to his visitors. "Come inside, all of you."

Most of the interior of the large cabin was a single room, floored with stone slabs. There were village-made work-tables and shelves, and a scattering of books, papers, chemical and electrical apparatus.

"I took a chance, stealing this for you," said Kaleta, pointing to a microscope under a dusty plastic cover. "Why'd you want it, if you're not working with the Water of Thought?"

"I was interested in the Water, at first. Drinking it brought me here; but here I have turned to more important things. Yes. Now I've almost entirely given over the physical and chemical sides of research. But here, here's an interesting bit of physical evidence."

From a table Magnuson picked up a skull, of somewhat less than adult Earthman size, but of a brain capacity probably sufficient for intelligence. The teeth were omnivorous, human-looking, and noticeably worn—probably a quarry-beast that chewed a lot of grit with its rough food. The jaw was short, heavy and almost chinless. Below a receding forehead the supraorbital ridges stood out boldly, joining together between the eyes. 48

"What do you say of it, gentlemen?" Magnuson spoke to Jones and Boris.

Jones, briefly a planeteer again, took the skull and turned it in his hands, looking at the face, the sides, and the top of the cranium. "I'd say it fits the type of standard, galactic pre-sapient hominid. Rare, but not astonishing."

"Right. Now, tell me, upon how many planets has the transition from beast to man been observed? The achievement of sapience by the standard hominid, or any other form?"

Jones shrugged. "It's never been observed but that's not surprising. If you want to talk technical evolutionary theory, it's an instance of the automatic suppression of a peduncle. The beginnings of all things tend to be out of sight and out of reach."

"Right again." Magnuson nodded, smiling and intent. "But here and now, upon this planet the rare moment is before us, or it will be if we choose to create it. And I so choose."

Jones put down the skull, and leaned wearily against the table. "All this has ceased to concern me, or I'd argue with your methods."

"Then argue. You will soon be concerned again with the rest of humanity. I've told you that your slavery to the Water of Thought will probably soon be over."

"If I'm soon dead." Jones displayed a sickly smile. "If I argue with you, will you refill my bottle?"

"No. But I can promise you that you'll drink the Water of Thought once more. We all will when we enter the initiation ceremony."

Kaleta and Morton almost jumped at Magnuson, cursing him and demanding explanations; Boris came near joining them.

"I tried to have you all exempted from drinking," Magnuson said. "But the chiefs refused. They gave in to me on letting the hominids participate, so I could not press this other point."

Only Jones had relaxed. "Then I won't argue. I'll accept as true any theory that brings me more of the Water."

"If you won't argue, I will," said Boris. "Our going through a paddling to join some half-wit fraternity is not going to prove anything, except that we'd rather suffer than die. Neither will it prove much about your hominid pupils here, as far as I can see. If you can't educate them now, a torture

session won't make them any smarter. What's wrong with just letting them alone, to go to hell in their own way? That's all the Space Force wants, and for once I agree with my bosses."

But it was no use, he was not getting through to Magnuson; they were thinking in different co-ordinate systems. Boris had expected an argument to fail but he had to try.

Magnuson faced Boris more in sadness than in anger, or perhaps controlling his anger well. "Oh, yes. I am—what is the phrase?—a do-gooder? I interfere. My interference in evolutionary processes has been forbidden on this and other planets. I remember the words of one Tribune—he said my work would be cruel, cruel to animals and men. As if hominids and men were not already on the anvil of evolutionl The only mercy granted the hominids now is their ignorance of what lies just beyond their reach. Cruel! Perhaps that Tribune would forbid a woman to give birth, because the experience would traumatize her child."

"Well. I can't stop you." Boris picked up the hominid skull from the table, and on a hunch turned it upside down. The foramen magnum had been enlarged by crude hacking into a gaping hole, large enough to have permitted extraction of the brain.

Magnuson was smiling at Boris's discovery. "Yes, more evidence of proto-humanity. When a hominid dies in the quarry, or in my pen, the others cut or break open the skull, and devour at least part of the brain. Unpleasant, yes, young ladies. But still, as a twentieth-century anthropologist wrote: 'Nearly the most ancient human trick we know.' "

Boris sat in the sunny common of the Workers' Village, while Brenda stood behind him, massaging his tired neck, and kilted and kiltless children goggled at them.

"How's your ankle?" he asked.

"Not bad. Afraid I can't run for help, though."

"I can't do that or anything," he said. "I've tried."

"You will be able to, you will. Sometime."

"Magnuson thinks Jones and I will recover in another day or two; I suppose just in time to drink more of the stuff. But Magnuson isn't trusting me in the groundsuit any more."

"That's a good sign. Maybe he's right."

"I can't afford to start hoping." That was a shameful thing 50 to say to a brave girl but Boris said it. He could feel himself hitting bottom.

Quartered that night in a hut in the Workers' Village, Boris dreamed again. He was a hominid, dragging a heavy sledge up the side of a quarry-pit. He felt a whip. Planeteer Hayashi was behind him, pulling desperately with one hand at the monstrous growth upon his face, and lashing Boris with the other.

In the mohning there was a breakfast of fruit, stewed meat, and fresh-baked bread. A pair of robed priests arrived from the lower village, and helped Magnuson lead his six young hominids from the pen, after first roping them together like mountain climbers. Then the procession of the day before, enlarged by hominids and priests, moved upstream again. This time the groundsuit was left behind, so Jones was not as closely guarded.

After a mile the flat valley pinched in again, becoming a gorge through which the Yunoee rumbled. Again the trail became difficult; but the journey was short.

The Warriors' Village, at the influx of a tributary creek, straddled the Yunoee like the two settlements below. The warriors' huts were roughly made, and crudely shingled with thorny bark.

Here, the villagers' greeting was a screaming mob-scene. Boris put protective arms around Brenda and Jane as howling warriors leaped past them, brandishing knives and clubs.

It was the roped-together hominids who drew the brunt of the threatening uproar. It took all the shouting and gesturing that Magnuson and the robed witch-men could manage to keep the hominids from being assaulted and probably slaughtered. The hominids cowered and snarled, huddling in a group ringed by screaming warriors and squaws. It took half an hour for Magnuson to get his pupils into the village to the comparative safety of a pen that had been built for them.

Boris had little worry to spare for hominids. But he was relieved when the village women took gentle custody of

Brenda and Jane and led them away, evidently to some ceremony where males were prohibited.

Kaleta and Morton whispered together. Jones paced the village restlessly. Boris sat down in the abandoned hut where he and Jones had been billeted, and tried to keep out of trouble.

He had been there only a few minutes when a shadow darkened the green brightness of the doorway, and Morton stepped in.

"Brazil, you're still under Jones's orders, huh?"

"Yes. But I can defend myself if need be."

"I didn't come in to start a fight." Morton seated himself on the earth floor. "Look, 'do you know anything about this initiation business Magnuson's got us into?"

"Not this one in particular. I've seen 'em on other planets."

"What's the best way to get through one?"

"You're asking me for help? When do you plan to murder me?"

"All right, so I've got a lot of nerve. I said I didn't come in here for trouble, but you don't scare me a damn bit, colonel, or whatever the hell you are. You don't have your tin suit on now."

Jones came in. "What's this all about?"

Morton stood up. "Maybe you'll tell me something about this initiation thing. After it's over you'll want me around to help you fill your bottle."

Jones's cheek started twitching. "There's no secret about getting through. Just grit your teeth and follow orders, and don't try to fight back. As Brazil said, it's like joining some half-wit fraternity."

Morton nodded slowly. "That's about what I thought. And it might be pretty rough, right? Suppose we tried to get out of here, today or tonight. What do you think our chances would be?"

"Just about zero," said Jones. "And I don't want to get away."

"Sure, you'll do anything to stay near the Thought-Water." Morton thought for a moment. "Well, I agree, for once. I've gone through a lot already to get my hands on it. I'm not gonna quit."

When Morton was gone, Jones sat down, his cheek still twitching, and pulled his stone bottle from a coverall pocket. 52

"Brazil, you're lucky. If you're cured, you're a free man. If I'm cured, I'm still a murderer. You know if I lose the Water now, I won't have anything." "You think we'll be cured?"

"Magnuson thinks so, and he's so sure of everything. Right now he's arguing with the chiefs again. They still don't like the idea of initiating his six hominids, but he's insisting, and he'll probably win. He's quite a man."

"He is. But what chance will his hominids have in an initiation?"

"Almost none. They won't know what it's all about They're just simple, ignorant people." "People?"

Jones raised the dry bottle to his mouth, holding it vertical to drain any last possible drop. Then he hurled it across the hut, and began to laugh, in quiet near-hysteria.

"They're people," Jones said. "I'm mad, but I know. Don't ask me how." Then he collapsed, laughing or sobbing.

Boris sat quiedy looking out into the green Kappan sunshine.

Somehow, the day passed and most of the night.

In the dark pre-dawn, Boris found himself suddenly awake, listening to a distant rumble of drums, and to a howl like that of whirled bull-roarers. Across the hut, Jones too was awake and sitting up. Before either could speak, the hut was filled with warriors, masked and painted as Boris had never seen them before. He was jerked to his feet and dragged from the hut with Jones beside him. Their escort joined another little swarm of warriors surrounding Morton and Kaleta, and the whole mob moved out of the village, taking the path that climbed yet farther upstream beside the riverbank. Magnuson was there already, going in the same direction under his own power, holding the lead end of a rope which the six cowering hominids gripped like blind men traversing a place of danger.

There was much howling and josding. Boris staggered and scrambled and was pushed along. Torchlight fell on frenzied or frightened faces, on night-black river water and the white curl of rapids. Half a mile ahead, the sky was lighted by a huge fire, and from there came the sounds of drum and bull-roarer.

Those last two hominids still stood, moving obediently with the circle, holding firmly to their ritual rocks, while one warrior jabbed at them with a point and another scorched them with a glowing stick. The two hominids watched Magnuson like dogs, and they obeyed him like trusting men, amid this violence and death. And Boris saw two warriors look at each other, look and come to silent agreement. They thrust with their spears, and the fifth hominid died, not by the rules of the rite of passage, but by racial murder.

Then the two murderers saw Magnuson turn toward them, and they moved away as if ashamed, and so the sixth hominid still lived, under Magnuson's watchful eye.

To Boris, all these things seemed to hold deep mystical significance. He knew he was sliding deeper into the hypnosis of rhythm and pain and the Water of Thought and whatever else might be here at work; he knew it with the comer of his mind that was still normal but kept shrinking into less and less importance. Boris was not frightened now. Mayor Pete Kaleta hopped past him, glaring wildly, muttering his terror, but that meant nothing to Boris. Even Red Circles had become an unimportant figure, who now and then approached bringing unimportant torment.

The fifth hominid had died unjustly, killed by murderers who were false to the tribe and false to the spirit of man. Some time Boris would tell the story and see the murderers punished. Some time in the future. But there was no future, really; this dance was eternal.

The figure of Magnuson drifted past, dancing mechanically, bending to look at the stained earth where his hominids had died, then looking up again, eyes prayerfully following the lone hominid survivor.

It was the young hominid with one hand. Magnuson should be praying, now. There should be some atheist's prayer to the Spirit of Man that he could say.

Let us call you down, Man, from your abode of evolutionary law. Let our fire and the sound of our drum bring you down through this planet's night to enter the brains of those who dance for you. Make us all men. Make us all men. Boris could almost see the Spirit now, brooding in the rolling heat above the tongues of fire, coming and going with the heartbeat of the heaviest drum.

Then there was a disturbing noise to give his mind a 56 foothold, and he fought his way up from deepening trance, pushing spirits and dreams away. One of the village adolescents had cracked and gone wild, had screamed and tried to run from the torture and the dance. And spearmen, ruthlessly obedient to the law of the ritual, forced their weapons home. The young Kappan died with a bubbling scream. Magnuson did not care about this one; Magnuson did not take his eyes from his hominid. But Boris saw the corpse dragged away. The sacred rock had fallen from the boy's hand, and a man kicked it into the fire.

Don Morton danced past; Boris was vaguely surprised to see him still alive. Morton's eyes were glazed and he shouted incoherently. He did not blink when a warrior jabbed him.

The next thing Boris realized clearly was that the dance was over; the sun was touching the eastern horizon; and he and the other survivors were being led through the gloomy woods in torchlit silence. Was the ordeal finished? Not likely.

Boris heard one awakening bird, and then found himself entering the mouth of a cave. His head still echoed with the now-silent drums, and his minor wounds blended into one pervasive ache, but it was not over yet. He was herded forward w'th the others into damp stony silence.

The twisting passages of the cave linked together chambers so big that in some of them the torchlight died out without revealing all the walls. Feet shuffled behind Boris and ahead of him, and from somewhere came the sound of trickling water. His throat burned with thirst, but there was no use hoping for a drink.

The procession of candidates for manhood wound to a halt inside another big chamber. Here each candidate was made to sit in a separate niche among the rocks, isolated from sight of the others. Boris sat down with relief; there was a moment of rest and peace.

Magnuson walked past him, croaking, "Do not move from where you have been placed, under pain of death. Do not move from where you have been placed—" He went on, repeating the warning, evidentiy for the other Earth-descended.

Sitting in his rocky niche, probably carved out many generations ago, Boris could see no one. In most directions, his field of view extended hardly farther than his arm could reach. Direcdy behind him was a shadowy opening between

rocks that looked as if Something might crawl out of it at any moment; directly in front was a large open space. Niches and folds and stalagmites surrounded the open space like rows of seats round an arena; and now in the arena there gathered half a dozen robed medicine men, carrying torches and chanting.

As they chanted, the witchmen were extinguishing their torches one by one, so the darkness grew up a leap at a time. Boris waited, fatalistically ready for whatever might come next. He sat tailor-fashion, holding his sacred rock on one knee, while the other stones tied to his net-garment dragged wearily down upon his shoulders.

Only one torch still burned. The medicine men were lighting what appeared to be small shielded lanterns from it, while the rocks of the cave leaned and swayed with its light And now the priest-chief, wearing the biggest mask of all, appeared in the arena, chanting his own song, an animal-skin robe dribbling wet in his hands. He raised the robe above his head, and brought the night down with it, putting out the light. The last syllable of the chant died with the sputtering of the torch. With sight gone, the sound of trickling water seemed louder. And now Boris could notice that the air in the cave was fresh and that it moved subtly past him. Probably there were several exits. A clever man might crawl through this darkness, find a way out and be miles away in the woods before his tormentors missed him. A man who thought himself clever might easily crawl into a trap and get himself speared to death. Still, escape was now a possibility, but a faint one; and things were not that desperate yet.

At least Boris found himself able to think like a man again. Had his free will really been restored? Did Magnuson think that the ordeal would help to cure him and Jones—

A hideous scream tore through the blackness, echoing and re-echoing like a frenzied animal leaping from one wall to another of its cage. Boris kept himself under control and sat still. There was a shuffle of movement nearby and the sound of heavy breathing. Somewhere a Kappan boy began a hesitant, groping chant, as if inventing prayer.

Boris's eyes grew slowly sensitive in the darkness. Now he could detect a faint blur of light across the upper part of the cave. 58

"Brazil? Magnuson? Anyone near me?" It was Jones's voice from somewhere nearby on Boris's right.

No one jumped at Jones to kill him for speaking, so Boris judged it was safe to answer. "Brazil here. What's up?"

"Good. Listen, Brazil, some of these guys with the spears may have taken a drug to sharpen their night vision. Before this started I heard one of the women saying something about it."

"One of the women?" Talking was rough on the dried-out throat, but it might help the cause of sanity.

"Yes. From what I heard, the women have their initiation in this cave, too. None of them ever get killed; Brenda and Jane are probably having a feast with their new sisters right now. How long have we been in here?"

"I don't know."

No one else seemed disposed to join the conversation. Talking too much might be dangerous. There was silence for a little while.

"Brazil, you don't think I really wanted to leave my family, do you? Leave everything I had and everything I was? Maybe you wanted to be a slave to this Water of Thought but I didn't."

Boris's head jerked around. He stared into the darkness, toward the invisible Jones. "What do you mean, maybe I wanted to be a slave?"

"Well. Some people do want to get rid of all responsibility. It occurred to me."

Boris felt a great hollow rage. There's no truth at all in that, he thought. Not in my case. I wasn't tired of being responsible for myself.

God. It couldn't be true, could U? He shivered, sitting still in the damp, moving air. Suppose the Water of Thought pushed an Earthman's mind whichever way it happened to be leaning, making a fatal obsession out of what had been only a potential weakness.

Was this realization the cure that Magnuson had predicted? Or was it the cure, but Magnuson didn't realize it—

From off among the rocks came a sudden weak flash of light—one of the dark lanterns flicked open for an instant. There was a startled gasp and then a return of darkness and silence. After a timeless interval another lantern flashed in another part of the cave, accompanied by the sound of sud-

den movement and a cry of fear. Boris made his muscles relax and tried to keep his mind on things other than thirst or danger.

Perhaps it was well that he did, for the next light that flashed was aimed at him, and he saw that between him and the lantern crawled the figure of Red Circles, knife in hand. In the next instant blackness had returned. Don't move, Boris reminded himself, under penalty of death. He would like to crack Red Circles on the knuckles with two or three pounds of sacred rock, but that might be considered bad form.

But instead of the now-familiar pain of Red Circles' dull bone knife, the lantern beam came again, still aimed at Boris. Red Circles was not in sight. Five feet in front of Boris, on the cave floor, was a large cup that seemed to be full of water. The light went out again.

He was not to move from where they had placed him; and they would know, somehow, if he did. But Boris's memory held the sight of the cup, full to overflowing, a little water sloshed out onto the stone floor as if the cup had just been hastily set down. Boris's thirsty throat argued that no one could notice a difference if a mouthful of water were taken out. But his brain knew it was some kind of a trap. The cup might even be poisoned. If he had to, he could go for a long time yet without drinking. And he had to.

He shifted and stretched his fingers, which were growing stiff from gripping the sacred tool-rock; it would not do to drop the thing by accident. Then he gave a little jump, and cursed, as Red Circles jabbed him nastily from behind, out of utter silence and darkness. Boris felt sure it had been Red Circles again; he thought he could recognize the technique by now. He kept himself from trying to kill Red Circles.

What price free will now?

From somewhere in the cave there came an animal sound, a growling and snuffling that spoke plainly of a prowling predator. Boris's intellect insisted that it must be only a warrior doing imitations, and Boris kept his intellect firmly in control.

Soon, from close in front of him, came the faintest possible sound, as if someone were examining the cup, or removing it.

Unmeasurable time hung in the cave. Its darkness swarmed with ghosts of sound, like the murmur in a man's ears of his own bloodstream. Like the imaginable sounds inside an ant-60 hill whose inhabitants sought a way to climb out toward sentience. Growing louder in the mind, a whispering that might have been blind cells, evolving, pre-conscious but desperate to grow, to find the way to Thought. . . .

This was worse than the dance. Boris wanted to leap up, to fight, to run away; but he made himself sit still. When the animal snuffling came again, it was almost a relief.

Boris heard Red Circles coming to stick him again, behind the rocks to his left rear. It was a very faint sound of movement, but Boris heard it. How good it would be to turn and smash the sacred rock into—

"Boris?" It was a tiny ghost of a whisper, but he knew immediately that it came from Brenda. Great God Support of Physics! He wanted to whisper to her to get out of here, but his dry throat choked.

"Boris, it's Brenda. I can see, a little. Do you need water?"

"Yes," he got out, in a faint whisper. "But—"

She was moving away already, crawling in almost perfect silence, apparently going to get him a drink. She must be mad. But what was he to do, call her back, start an argument with her?

Then Jones's voice came again from somewhere on Boris's right.

"Brazil, I did want to. I've thought it out, I've faced it." "Jones? What's that?"

"I did want to give up everything. I sit here in the dark and I can see into myself. I left Kitty and I left my work and everything else I had. I wanted to be a fanatic, to give up my whole life for something, and I did. For the Water."

"It—may work out." Boris was listening for Brenda, expecting every moment to hear the sounds of her capture or murder. He wondered if any of the warriors who must be listening could understand his talk with Jones. Boris flexed his legs, getting ready for the hopeless running fight that seemed inevitable. At least that might give Brenda a chance to escape. But how had she gotten in? And where was she?

"It'll work out, Brazil. I'll tell you how it will. I gave up everything for the Water, and now it's given me up. I'm cured." Jones's voice was dead.

"What?"

"That last drink we had, starting this business. It tasted

the same, but it meant nothing to me—it had no effect. I'm dead, Brazil. My life has gone for nothing."

Boris was listening and listening for Brenda, sifting every whisper of sound. He almost shouted for Jones to shut up. "Maybe so, Jones," Boris said.

"Maybe so. Listen, Brazil, they put a cup here, right in front of me. I wonder what's in it."

"They set a cup here but I didn't taste it."

"No, you wouldn't. You're not the land to give up your life for somethingl. Nobody's ever understood me. My wife or anyone else. If I thought this cup had the Water in it, and that I might feel it again—"

"Can't you keep quiet?"

"Quiet? Quiet? Gods of Space, I'm dead, and you say keep quiet. Brazil, I'm putting you back under orders, right now. Don't move unless I tell you, and don't lie to me."

Boris heard a sound behind him, and knew somehow that it was Brenda coming back, bringing him water. He was afraid to try to move. His freedom had been only an illusion, and had flickered away into nothing at a word from his master. Boris could do nothing for Brenda, for himself or for anyone else: Whatever happened was not going to be his fault, no, not this time.

Jones said, "Brazil, is your cup still there? Taste it and tell me what it is."

"I don't know if it's here."

"Boris." It was Brenda's whisper, from behind him. Boris realized suddenly that they must have given her the Water of Thought during the women's ceremony, and that it must have unbalanced her in some way that brought her here now trying in this mad fashion to help him.

Jones said: "Brazil, I order you."

"Boris." She whispered his name again, and this time one of the warriors heard. Boris could vaguely see the man's upper body as he passed nearby, turned at the sound of Brenda's voice and approached to investigate, soft-footed as a cat. In ghosdy silence the warrior passed so near that Boris could see he carried a short spear, and was going to probe with the spear for Brenda.

Boris moved, without thinking of whether it might be possible—this terrible thing called freedom was his again.

He should have used his sacred rock, but for some reason 62 he set it down before he rose up silently behind the warrior. Boris's left hand shoved low into the Kappan's back, and his right whipped around for the silent-killing throat attack. Boris was stiff and weak, and the man was not properly caught. He still had balance enough to twist around and gasp in air, getting ready to yell. Boris drove a hand into the man's throat, preventing an outcry, and then grappled for the spear.

A second later the silhouette of the warrior's head bent backward; hands had reached from behind him to scratch and pull at his face. Boris managed to wrench the spear away, spun it end for end, and drove it home. A dying weight sagged away, sliding quietly to the floor of the cave.

Then Brenda had Boris by the hand, kissing his hand, and tugging on it at the same time, pulling him away. He let her lead him. The only hope now was to get out of here quickly, by whatever way she had sneaked in. Other warriors would already be approaching to see what had caused the scuffle.

Behind Boris, a far louder struggle exploded in the darkness. Jones's voice bellowed, "Brazil! There is no cure! Obey me! Fight for me!"

Lantern beams were springing alive, centered upon Jones. He had captured a spear, and was fighting like a berserker. Another spear had already been thrust through his body. One warrior lay at his feet, while more of them closed in.

There was nothing to do but go with Brenda and get out of here. Boris followed her insistent tugging, away from the lights and the struggle, under an overhang of rock that forced him to stoop, into still deeper darkness.

"Brazil, fight for mel I'll have the Water—before—" Jones's voice died away, and the sounds of fighting with it. The faint reflected glow of the lanterns vanished suddenly from Boris's vision. Jones is cured, he thought suddenly.

Brenda released Boris's hand and crawled ahead of him. The way became a tight low passage through which Boris could barely escape. He lost the rocks from his net-suit, and he lost a litde more skin, but he got through, still gripping his captured spear in one hand. After perhaps another hundred feet of crawling he could hear insects, and then he saw a crevice of comparative brightness, like the night sky.

There was room now for him to move beside Brenda. "This way out is the women's secret," she whispered. "One of them

showed it to me today. And I took some of the night-vision drug."

At last they had room to stand and walk; the passage emerged into the open air through a hole in a rocky hillside. Boris realized with dull surprise that night had indeed fallen again; he had been all day in the cave.

"We'll be safe here, for a while," Brenda whispered. "All alone." She put her arms around him.

He was so dulled with thirst and fatigue and weary pain that for a moment he did not understand what she was doing. Then with a jolt of surprise he gripped her shoulders and pushed her away, looking into her face.

"Boris, please, I can't help myself. Here." She started to take off her coverall.

"No," he croaked. It was the damned Thought-Water, of course, making her do this. She had been leaning toward loving him, and the Water had pushed her. "Water," he croaked, looking round the starlit forest. The only animal urge he could feel at the moment was thirst.

"Borisl" But then she followed him downhill, limping on her bad ankle. "The river's this way." Her voice sounded as if she was weeping.

When he came in sight of the Yunoee, he staggered toward it with only elementary caution, and threw himself down on the bank. He thrust in his head, and drank and swallowed. He emerged with sharpened awareness of all his pains and problems, but again able to think clearly.

"Now, Boris, please. Love me."

"Brenda, honey, I've got to run for my life. There's no time. It's the drug making you do this now—"

She gave a little scream of frustration and shame, and her hand slapped across his face. "You filth! I risked my life to save you!"

"Brenda—" He hesitated. Would she come with him? Should he drag her along? There was her bad ankle. And if they caught her with him, likely they would kill her. If she stayed here, Magnuson might protect her. They didn't know she had sneaked into the cave.

Brenda made her own decision. "Go on, run! I'll stay here where there are men!"

And she collapsed, sobbing. 64

VII

Boris bent over her, and kissed her once. "Good-by," he said, and started running away from her, dodging among the trees as if flint points were already hurtling at his back-as they might well be, at any moment.

When he had seen enough of the sky to get his bearings from the stars, he set his course northward, at right angles to the easterly direction of the colony. Some of Red Circles' men would go east to cut him off, but he would try to circle them and hide from them.

At the moment, the important thing was to put distance between himself and the Warriors' Village. So far, the grassy footing was easy, and Boris made the most of it. When daylight came, he would hide and rest, and think about scrounging food and improvising shoes.

Boris took stride after stride through the night, and there was no sign of pursuit yet. He came to a ridge, and climbed it, avoiding any way that looked in the starlight like a path, for beside a trail on this rim would be an ideal spot for a sentry. Red Circles, he thought, you'll have quite a chase before you catch me, giving me this much start. In fact you'll find to your surprise that you can't catch me at all—positive thinking is the thing.

From the top of the ridge, Boris looked back. Now there were torches coming among the trees, but they were scattered widely and uncertainly, and he had a quarter of a mile on the nearest of them. He rested for a moment, and then moved north into the hills.

Boris expected Magnuson to join the pursuit. Once through the ordeal and in the tribe officially, Magnuson would be a great Kappan chief, and Boris expected him to have no tolerance for heretics. If Morton and Kaleta survived the test, they would doubtless join the hunt too, wanting Boris kept silent about their smuggling.

Boris held his course northward, angling a little east. His pursuers seemed not to be prospering, for he saw no more torches. They would finish the ceremony, probably, and wait until dawn, before starting an all-out search.

His way led him downhill, and he came to a stream, prob-

ably the same river that wound through the villages. Boris drank again, deeply, and told himself to hurry on without delay. But he really needed rest, and he sat down for a moment beside the star-reflecting water.

A vivid flash of memory came, a picture of Jones fighting in the cave, transfixed by a spear, and Boris's head jerked up in alarm. He had dozed into sleep, sitting slumped over on the bank of the murmuring stream. Gods of Space, he had more than dozed; the eastern sky was gray. He jumped to his feet in a near panic, and stood turning his head this way and that, looking and listening; but no one was near. He sighed with relief. He would find a place to hide during the daylight hours and move on again at night.

He waded into the stream and bent to drink again.

The stream here had a faintly fishy taste. Well, what was so strange about that? Probably there were a number of things that could make a stream taste that way—fish, for one.

The Yunoee flowed quiet and dark around Boris's knees. He waded upstream, stooping now and then to let the river bathe his stiffening little wounds, and wash the dried Kappan blood from the spear he carried.

Dawn was becoming a fact. Boris tasted the river again; there was no use denying that here it savored faintly of the Water of Thought. That was one taste he was never going to forget.

He came to where a tangled thicket grew down to the water's edge, and probed his way with the spear into the midnight gloom of the densest growth, and settled down to rest.

When the ordeal ended, at dawn, Magnuson went with the other survivors to a joyful welcome—somewhat marred by Brazil's escape—in the Warriors' Village. Their wounds had been treated, and the new members of the tribe drank and ate and rested. Before allowing himself to relax, Magnuson first saw the new man, the one-handed hominid, safely housed in the pen where he had been one of six confined animals the day before. Planning the new man's protection and education, Magnuson fell asleep.

He was awakened by a not-too-gentle prodding, and saw a figure wearing a groundsuit standing over him. Startled, he jumped to his feet. 66

It was Morton's face inside the helmet. "Magnuson, you're coming with me. They haven't caught Brazil yet, and we can't let him reach the colony. I can run him down easy in this suit if I can get on his trail, but I need some guides and trackers and I need you to boss them and interpret."

Magnuson thought about Brazil. "Yes, he should be caught," he finally said.

"Damn right. I'm glad you see things straight for once."

Jane, excited, came running up to them. "You'll catch him, won't you? And what about Brenda? She couldn't be with him, could she?"

"You jealous?" Morton grinned. "Red Circles tells me little Brenda's just sitting out in the woods, all by herself. I told him to let her stay there as long as she's out of our hair for a while. She can't run away with that ankle."

Magnuson realized that Jane and Brenda had both been given the Water of Thought for the first time. And Morton! Again Magnuson would have to deal with a madman in a groundsuit.

"How do you two feel?" Magnuson asked.

"Ill feel fine when I get Brazil in these." Morton raised the suit's armored hands, and smiled. "Surprised to see me dressed up? Why, you told me the whole tribe would be my brothers now. Nobody stopped me putting it on."

"Go catch him, then," said Jane, her fingers twisting nervously at her hair. "Why should she ever have him?"

"Come on, Professor," said Morton.

"All right, all right, 111 come with you. Where's Kaleta? Ill have to leave some instructions for him.''

"In there, still sleeping it off. Hurry up!"

Magnuson entered the hut and shook the mayor awake. "Kaleta, can I trust you to do something important?"

"I can hardly move."

"You needn't move much. I've got to go with Morton, and my hominid is in the pen, here in the village. I don't expect any of the villagers will attack him now, but, just in case, I want you to guard him. Nothing must happen to him. And see that he has food and water. I've treated his wounds already. Watch over him until I get back."

"Awright. When I wake up."

"You can sleep in front of the pen. No one will bother you."

From outside, Morton shouted, "Get the lead out, Magnuson! I'm takin' a regular war party north!"

Setting out with Morton and six warriors to track down Brazil, Magnuson glanced back into the empty-looking village. Kaleta's plump form was stretched in sleep beside the pen; above him, the one-handed hominid reached out through the palings, as if asking some patient question.

Boris awoke to find the sun near the zenith. He was ravenously hungry, and nibbled the leaves and juicy stalks of a likely-looking plant. While awaiting his stomach's judgment on the plant, he unraveled some strings from his net-garment, and tried binding big leaves to his feet to serve as sandals. He feared that the service life of leaf-sandals was likely to be almost zero, but no better materials were available. So far he had been lucky in that his hike had been mosdy over easy grass. Tonight things might well be worse.

His stomach was growling with nothing worse than hunger, so he ate more of the leaves and stalks. Some trees grew up through the thicket, and under their loose bark Boris discovered some grubs which were no doubt rich in protein and fat, and which turned out to be quite palatable to an experienced planeteer who thought of something else while he swallowed. Boris did not need to approach starvation before he could suppress bis civilized tastes. Today even raw and hairy food meant strength and life, and he meant to live.

After eating enough to take the edge off his hunger, and trying some improvements on the sandals, Boris rested again. It was nearly dark when he heard men's voices, evidently moving along the opposite bank of the stream. He thought they were speaking in the villagers' language, and he waited motionless until after they had faded out in the distance.

It was nearly six days now, he computed, since Jones had pointed an energy rifle at him and compelled him to swallow the Water of Thought. It was a day and a half since the ordeal had started, and doubtless that was over by now. For nearly twenty Standard Hours Boris had been free, and that would not sit well with the Kappans, nor with Magnuson, nor with the smugglers. A massive search would be under way for the defector from the fraternity. Magnuson or Kaleta or Morton might be wearing the groundsuit, in the search. 68

Probably they had a copter available, too, but it would not help them much above this high forest.

He had a substantial start on his pursuers, and a real chance. He decided to wade on upstream as far as possible, then leave the river and start moving in a great circle toward the colony. In three or four days he might reach it.

When it was quite dark, Boris slid from the thicket into the water again. When he drank, he was again aware of the taste of the Water of Thought, faint but undeniable. He couldn't puzzle it out now; he moved on.

Within a quarter of a mile, he ran into rapids and waterfalls, as he had more or less expected. He had to climb from the stream, and, looking back, he got a nasty shock. There were lanterns behind him, near the thicket where he had spent the day. He had used up strength and time, and moved himself a dozen miles further from the colony, but they were as close on his trail as ever. No doubt he had succeeded in scattering and worrying his tribe of enemies, but that did him little good.

There was a reasonable path following the course of the river, and he took it upstream. If he struck off through the brush he would slow himself down and leave a plain trail. Not to mention his feet. The leaf-sandals were falling apart already, as useless as he had feared they would be. Tonight, he thought, my feet will give out.

He looked up at the stars. The Space Force ship was now three days overdue, and might very well be in orbit around Kappa now, but then again it might very well be three more days in arriving. And when they arrived, they would hardly start their search during the hours of darkness. These were not very positive thoughts he was having, but they were the best he could do at the moment.

It was a nightmare of a night. All through it, four or five lanterns stayed on his trail in the dark. At last the undergrowth thinned out, and he could move away from the riverbank and start a false trail or two. Sore feet and all, he thought he gained a little distance on his pursuers, but at dawn he did not dare try and hide. He found himself following the spine of a high wooded ridge, and he just kept moving along it. He could go downhill, and hope to find a peaceful stretch of the Yunoee, or another stream in which to drown his trail; but if he missed finding an escape, the hunt-

ers would come down on him like an avalanche. He didn't think he could climb another hill.

Having just admitted that to himself, he came to a place where the ridge he was following angled higher. A sketch of a path led upward, and in the soft dust were several sets of prints of what looked like bare human feet. The sight raised some hope in Boris; to enter the territory of another tribe could mean a chance for him.

Somewhat to his surprise, Boris found that he could still walk uphill, at least in this soft dusty trail. His feet had once been strong and sure, and they might someday be useful again, but right now he would prefer not to know them. Then, too, there were things called water, and food, and rest, but Boris had more or less forgotten what they were like.

Scion of the Martian Brazils, famous bon vivant and adventurer, adjudged not quite human by Red Circles, scion of the Kappan Circles .. .

He was getting lightheaded, and all he had to do now was faint and roll back downhill; that would fix eveiything nicely. Boris gained a small rise in the trail, and stopped to breathe. Looking back, he could see the warriors coming, only two hundred yards behind him now. There were ten of them, and one had something over his eyes as if to shield them from the light. So, one of them had taken the night-vision drug, that was how they had tracked him through the night with only torches to light his trail. It seemed unfair.

Boris climbed on. He had to pause for rest after every second or third step, and each time he stopped he glanced back. The warriors saw him, all right, for they pointed at him, and waved their weapons as if to urge one another on. But still they advanced hesitantly, making no great speed. Could they possibly fear him? Did they think he had magic powers which had let him escape the ordeal?

Gritting his teeth and gripping his spear, Boris kept going. They weren't going to take him prisoner. No, not again. His hunters gained on him, but reluctantly. Maybe from down there he looked like a man walking deliberately, contemptuous of his pursuers. Maybe if he turned and walked toward them they would run.

He glanced back once more, and nearly fell, for his hunters were indeed retreating, backing away with nocked arrows and leveled spears. Boris looked uphill, and saw the hominid 70 tribe coming down in a slow semi-circle, dozens of them, armed with stones and crude clubs. He faced back immediately toward the retreating hunters and hurled his spear after them, staggering with the effort. The spear fell short, but the gesture just might suggest to the hominids that his heart was in the right place.

About half of the hominids charged downhill past Boris, howling at his pursuers, who turned and fled. The others surrounded him, yipping and jabbering about him, not knowing what to make of him. These were no dead-eyed quarry beasts. It seemed to Boris, groggy as he was, that these might very well be men. He made a planeteer's gesture for communicating with primitives, and aroused some interest. The hominids formed a loose squatting circle around Boris, and took turns jabbering. They shooed insects, and panted and yawned, showing their human teeth.

Boris's head was spinning, but he kept on making gestures, and tried a few words of this and that, being careful not to sound like a villager. His audience gaped unappreciatively. To blazes with them all, and also with the idea of preserving a show of something or other. If he was going to die here, it would not be while standing on these feet. He sat down in the dust, and began to examine what was left of his soles.

From somewhere downhill came cries and shouts that sounded like a fight in progress. Most of the crowd lost interest in Boris and charged off in that direction, only three or four staying behind to watch him.

He would try to ask them for water. Because the sun was so hot.. .

He was being carried, his head on a leathery shoulder, other arms and shoulders supporting his body. Hominid smell was thick about him. Overhead, treetops flowed by at a fast walk. Boris's mouth was wet: it seemed water had been poured on him, and he had a memory of recent choking and swallowing. It was dim here under the tall trees, though what little sky Boris could see was still bright with daylight. The trail he was on was narrow and twisting, overhung by many branches. His unspeakmg bearers were carrying him into some secret fastness of the dim green forest.

and hurl it back, flattening his enemy like an insect on a wall.

The rock hit him before he realized it was too big to catch, on this loose footing. The boulder bore him downhill, and he screamed in terror as it bounded with him, rolling him among other rocks, shooting him finally against immobile masses of stone, with a clanging like the end of the world.

He lay gasping there for long seconds, before he could feel sure he was not killed or maimed. In fact he was hardly hurt at all, just bruised and with the wind knocked out of him.

"I'm gonna break your arms and legs, Brazil, and then your neckl" he called aloud, when he got to his feet at last. He knew his enemies were somewhere nearby. They would be laughing at him, and getting ready to roll more rocks at him.

Both sides could play that gamel With a sudden inspiration, Morton picked up some small rocks, and looked around for a target. Where was Brazil? Now it was hard to see anything through this smeared and damaged faceplate. Morton would like to get his hands on the madman, the degenerate, who built this suit, and—

There was a hominid, looking down at him! Morton threw an egg-sized stone; it seemed to go like a bullet, but it missed the target, and whizzed away into space.

He could swear he heard them laughing. Maybe they were getting another boulder ready to roll down at him; he had better get back up to the top of a hill. He picked up half a dozen throwing pebbles, but his maniacal left arm dropped and scattered them, half way up the slope. Another rock hit him. Smoke drifted around him.

Morton was beyond rage. He made a crooning sound, like a lover singing. When he saw Brazil, he charged at full speed paying no heed to anything else. A wide chasm was almost under his feet before he saw it. Morton leaped desperately, and the edge of the far side struck him in the chest. He slung there with his arms, emptiness under his feet, and the suit's left arm failed him, just as Brazil hit him with another big rock. Then Morton was endlessly falling, bouncing and falling again, the world of rocks and sky spinning around him and suddenly going dark. 104

"Is the shining monster dead?" asked one of the young men with Boris.

Boris sat down shakily on a ledge. His hands were bleeding from the edges of that last rock, and his chest was heaving. It had been a very near thing.

"I doubt it," he answered. "But I think he will be tired of fighting us."

"It will take—" The hominid held up a hand against the course of the sun. "This long, for us to climb down and see if the monster is dead. If the river does not carry him away. I think he finished falling in the river."

"You are a good fighter, Yellow Monster," said the other hominid.

"Thank you. Let's leave the Shining One where he is. I want to lead some of The People downstream against the villages."

An hour had passed since Morton had gone charging away after Brazil. Magnuson was crouching behind a log, within earshot of the murmuring Yunoee, the six warriors scattered near him in concealed positions. Shortly after Morton had left, the horninids had launched a stone-throwing attack, but the villagers' arrows had driven them off.

Now all was quiet. Could Morton be still venting some fiendish vengeance on his enemy? Or had Brazil out-thought him and escaped him, or even found a way to defeat him?

Magnuson rather suspected the latter. It was hard for him not to admire a man like Brazil. Maybe Brazil hadn't simply broken and fled from the ordeal Maybe there had been some deeper reason—

"Magnuson, someone comes."

The warriors were stirring, turning their attention downstream, to the south. Were the horninids trying to encircle and trap them?

But it was Red Circles who came into view on the riverside path. He was leading a strong war party, twelve or fifteen men, all carrying the painted buckets that Magnuson knew were used only on raids after the Water of Thought.

Red Circles came forward, walking tall, his eyes scouting the woods. He stopped, and Magnuson stood up to greet him,

"Magnuson, the Earthman Ka-le-ta is dead."

"What? How?"

Red Circles put a hand to his belt and pulled out a machine pistol, holding it awkwardly. "Ka-le-ta killed three men with this, and he violated the temple. So I killed him."

"What of the hominid-man?" Magnuson asked. "Be careful with that weapon; it is dangerous." He couldn't see if the safety was on. Kaleta must have had the weapon hidden somewhere; then he had been drugged by the Water-Red Circles curled his lip at the mention of danger; but he held the pistol out to Magnuson. "Maybe you can kill some of the Forest People with this, Magnuson, though you have no skill with the bow. Maybe you will kill your hominid-man, for he has run away."

"Run away?" Magnuson took a step forward, almost grabbing at Red Circles. "Where? How do you know?" "The pen stands open."

Red Circles would not lie, but his tone was insolent. Magnuson accepted the pistol, put the safety on, and drew himself up.

"Red Circles, you will speak to me with respect. The Spirit of Man speaks to this world through me, and that is a greater thing than you can understand." Magnuson knew there was no Spirit, no God, and there would be none until Man had evolved himself upward to infinite power. But Magnuson's work brought that moment closer, so he was not lying to Red Circles. Red Circles could not know these things as a civilized man knew them, so their weight was all with Magnuson.

The war chief scowled, but he could not steadily look Magnuson in the eye.

"We must find the man-hominid," Magnuson said. "He is one of our tribe now. Have you any idea where he is?"

Red Circles gave the Kappan equivalent of a shrug. "Who can say where a hominid might hide?"

"We must search for him."

Red Circles shifted his feet uneasily, but his voice was stubborn. "I and these men are busy. We are going to get more Thought-Water. Ka-le-ta defiled the vat, and it must be restocked at once, so we are going to the Sacred Pool, all the way upstream. Once you asked many questions about the Water of Thought, Magnuson. Now you are one of us, and you can learn all about it."

This time Red Circles would not knuckle under. Still it was plain that he wanted no quarrel, that he was trying to 106 persuade Magnuson. Once Magnuson would have needed no persuading; he would have made a great effort to discover the source of the Water of Thought. Even now, the idea was tempting. This would be his last chance for any such discovery, for tomorrow or the next day the Space Force would be here, and he would be under arrest. But there was no time to spare.

"We go downstream," said Magnuson, putting his full authority into his voice. "We must track down the man-hominid, and keep him with us. He is proof of a very great magic, more important than the Water of Thought; he is a man made from an animal!"

"You go downstream, if you want. But I am chief of these warriors." Red Circles turned and shouted commandingly to his men: "We go up!"

Boris was beginning to suspect that he might, after all, be the dynamic-leader type, for he had gotten about twenty-five of the younger hominid men to follow him downriver against the villages. It was against all the Space Force rules to exacerbate local warfare, but he could see no other course that offered him so good a chance of getting his pursuers off his neck and, hopefully, rescuing Brenda. He was gambling that only a few villagers would be at home, that they would flee, and that casualties on either side would be at a minimum. He would gamble more than that to help Brenda.

"Run forward and make much noise when we come to the first village," Boris told his company. "Remember to look for a female monster; she is my friend."

His boys grunted cheerful assent; following a determined leader was a new and exciting game to them.

They charged whooping downhill, and took the Warriors' Village by surprise. As Boris had hoped, there was not a warrior home. The women and children evacuated the huts with miraculous speed, and went screaming panic and murder down the path toward the Workers' Village.

Thankfully there was no real murder, nor even injury; the hominids were not culturally advanced enough to enjoy pillage and rapine. They shrieked good-naturedly to urge the fleeing enemy on, and waved good-by with clubs.

"Remember, look for female monstersl" Boris led a hut-to-hut search, aided by those of his irregulars who chose to

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help. It did not take long to make certain that Brenda and Jane were elsewhere.

All this was funl The hominids willingly followed Boris downhill again.

"We will frighten another village!" he shouted, encouragingly, waving them on. He had a hard time keeping up with them now, though he had stopped to borrow a pair of some warrior's new moccasins, which were an excellent fit. Shoes were a higher invention than the wheel, and he meant to insist on the point at the next scholarly meeting he attended.

Boris and his army swept into the Workers' Village to find that panic had preceded them, and the huts and workshops were already empty of people. From the direction of the quarry came a querulous hominid yipping; not words, but the frightened monkey-call of the young, though in deeper adult voices.

"It is the Dark People," said the hominid standing beside Boris. In the next instant he ran toward the quarry, yipping a response. The others cascaded after him.

"Wait! Not yet!" Boris had not foreseen this. "Well get them out of there, but not yet!"

He might as well have shouted to recall the wind; his army was gone. But he could not blame them.

Seemingly alone in the deserted village, he ran from hut to hut.

"Brenda! Jane!" In one hut he found a quivering mass of bedding, but his probing uncovered only an ancient and ten-ified villager.

He took the downstream path again, this time alone. For the thousandth time he scanned the empty greenish day for any sign of rescuing copters. But there was no use expecting help beyond what he could give himself.

He scanned the stream closely as he neared the Temple Village, looking for the spot where Magnuson had made him throw in the second groundsuit and the energy rifles. Magnuson had not realized that an energy rifle would not be fouled by submersion.

When he came to the place, Boris waded out into the dark water, searching the muddy bottom with arms and legs. The current was not strong here, and what he sought could not be far away. Unless someone had beaten him to it.

He went under water to examine a deeper part of the bot-108 torn. When he came up for a breath, Morton was standing on the bank twenty yards away, wearing the battered suit, watching Boris.

"The river's not going to hide you," said the suit's speaker.

"Are you still drugged, Morton?" Boris asked. And just then his groping feet found the second groundsuit on the bottom of the river. Neck-deep in water, he stepped back, moving his feet this way and that, searching further.

"Oh no," said Morton. "It's worn off. I won't knock myself out anymore. But you know too much about our little business; I can't let you stay alive. You and the others can be blamed on the Kappans."

"Where's Brenda?" Boris asked. And just then his foot found one of the energy rifles. His actions concealed underwater, he scooped the rifle up with his foot, into his hands. But Morton was still too far away.

Morton smiled, and in a clear pleasant voice said, in obscene fantasy, just how he had disposed of Brenda. In the next instant Morton rushed Boris, charging with resisdess speed into the water. He came so quickly that Boris fired without raising the rifle above the surface.

There was a needle-jet of steam, and the groundsuit sounded, loudly, like a struck gong. A tiny hole appeared in its front. Morton fell forward with a great splash as Boris dove out of the way. The suited figure floated, face down, hissing, and Boris felt a wave of warmed water pass with it. The back of the cuirass, where the power lamp rode, showed a blackened place the size of a saucer; the suit's radio would be useless now, even if a way could be found to get at it from outside.

Holding the rifle, Boris climbed again from the river to the path. For a little while, before the suit sank, he and Morton kept pace toward the Temple Village and the quiet expanse of Great Lake beyond.

The wave of panic before the supposed hominid onslaught had emptied this village like the others. Again Boris walked among deserted dwellings, shouting for Brenda and Jane.

Pete Kaleta's head greeted him from atop a pole fixed in the ground before the temple. With shaky relief Boris made sure there was only one such pole. Brenda and Jane and Magnuson remained unaccounted for. Boris entered the tem-

Walking quickly past the rim of the quarry, Magnuson peered down. Sledges and ropes and tools were scattered carelessly. There had been a hominid raid, evidently, and the kilted overseers and workers had fled. But three of the quarry hominids were still in the pit, perhaps because they knew no other place, perhaps because fear of their masters still held them when their masters were gone. Their upturned faces, expressionless as those of cows, followed Magnuson as he walked along the rim. I will not fail you, Magnuson thought, looking down at them. I will yet raise you up into the sun.

There came a sharp clatter and thump from ahead of him, and a hominid scream. Inside his laboratory! If the wild ones were in there, and the one-handed man—Magnuson ran forward. He found the machine pistol ready in his hand.

The one-handed hominid was huddled down in a comer, and looked up beseechingly as Magnuson burst in. Before Magnuson could say or do anything a big wild one lunged at him out of the gloom.

The automatic pistol hammered out a deafening repeated concussion in the enclosed space. One-Hand screamed once more, and was silent, cowering away from the noise. The wild one was hurled back across the room, and torn nearly in half. A table had already been upset, and a murderous club lay on the floor.

There were no others. Shakily, Magnuson lowered the pistol. He had come just barely in time, it seemed, but the new human life was safe.

Something curious struck his eye, and he prodded with a toe at the nerve-twitching gray hand that had almost reached him. Half the body of a rat lay beside the hand. Curious.

Boris, still following the direction in which the priest had pointed, halted when he reached the edge of the clearing and saw the copter under the trees on the other side.

"Brenda?"

"Boris?" Her blessed head appeared in one of the copter ports, and was joined a second later by Jane's. "Boris, this thing won't fly; the controls are all smashed. But whoever did it forgot the radio. I got a message off half an hour ago, when the villagers all ran away. The colony took a bearing on us; they're sending an armed copter. Oh, you look so 114 funny in that little net. But you're alive . . ." Brenda began to sob.

Boris kissed her, gobbled half of an emergency ration he found in the copter, kissed her again, ate the other half of the ration, found a spare coverall and put it on.

"Since I look so funny, lets start hiking, ladies. I don't trust any offers of rescue."

He went first, with the rifle ready; Brenda was just behind him, her limp almost gone. They had made three hundred yards east along the lake shore when the copter from the colony arrived and picked them up.

A week later Boris walked once more across the common of the Temple Village, through pouring rain. Now the landing clearing was full of copters, and the muddy villages swarmed with Space Force men. The cruiser had arrived at last and was in orbit above the greenish clouds.

In the middle of the common, Boris came to a villager who stood still as if too bewildered to shelter himself. The steady rain had washed the colored clay from his powerful arms, but Boris knew him. When Boris made a peace gesture, the war chief only looked the more bewildered. After a brief sullen stare he turned and walked heavily away, a man whose normal world had been yanked out from under him, never to return.

Some of Earth's old primitives had believed that a rain such as this fell to mark the death of a great chief. Magnuson was no dead chief; he sat alone in his well-built hut, his face tired but showing an inner content.

He looked up without much surprise, as if Boris had been in his thoughts. "Brazil. It wasn't personal enmity that made me help them to hunt you. You understand that?"

"You mean Morton forced you?"

Magnuson hesitated. "I won't say that."

"You mean it was for the cause. The purification of mankind."

Magnuson folded his hands on the table before him. "I told you once that none of us matter, much, as individuals."

Boris shook his head slighdy. "Anyway, I've already given my statement to the Tribune. Have you read it or heard it?"

"No. I've been ordered to stay in this hut. They'll charge me formally when I've obtained counsel." Magnuson was sit-

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ting while Boris stood, but still Magnuson seemed to be looking down at him. "You know, my hominid is alive and well." "Your hominid?"

"I think I may claim credit for him. There are Space Force people examining him now. The day before the Space Force came, I succeeded in teaching him a word or two of speech. So you see the rite of passage was effective."

Sure now that Magnuson did not yet know the truth about the hominids and the Water, Boris stood there feeling weary, and found that he had no wish to destroy the smiling assurance before him. It would be short-lived before the Tribunes coming wrath, or it would perpetuate itself by sliding completely into self-delusion.

Magnuson said, "I was only just in time to save him from a wild one, you know. I wonder what name he'll choose, when he understands about names."

" 'Food-Giver' is a good name," said Boris. "Might call him that."

"I don't believe I understand."

"No, I don't believe you do." Boris had just come from viewing Food-Giver's corpse. There had been no one to open the skull properly and in time, to drain and preserve the observations of his generous life for coming generations of his people.

His grunting, flea-picking, much abused and cheerful people. Nasty, virtuous, and short. They were Boris's people now, in a real sense, and he meant to do what he could for them in the future.

But Boris could also remember Brenda being led into this village, to this hut, helpless in the hands of those who might have killed her in their greed and lust. And Magnuson cutting the cord that bound her hands, throwing the cord aside, cursing whatever bound human beings, whatever stunted them or made them less than perfect.

"Magnuson, I'll do what I can to help you. You've drunk the Water of Thought several times; you may have been still under its influence."

"No, we both know the effect soon passes. My actions here have been sane and responsible. The credit or biame is mine."

"The big charge will be manslaughter, or maybe even murder." Boris could not stay in the hut any longer, and walked out into the rain. 116